


Brave New World

by WishUponADragon



Category: Stellar Firma (Podcast), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Background Relationships, Bodyswap, Canon-Typical Behavior, Desolation!Tim, F/F, M/M, The Extinction, canon-typical Triexel, canon-typlical Elias, recovery from evil jobs, universe swap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 51
Words: 57,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23043049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishUponADragon/pseuds/WishUponADragon
Summary: *Spoilers for both fandoms through 160 TMA and season 1 hiatus content SF*David-7 is very happy to find himself somewhere where his likelihood of dying in the next week is only moderate, and Jonah Magnus is nothing if not adaptable.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, David 7/Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 287
Kudos: 241





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Institutes and Corporations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992541) by [miraeyeteeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraeyeteeth/pseuds/miraeyeteeth). 



“You are not David-7.” The smooth mechanical voice that interrupted his observation of the collective knowledge in this new and strange universe had an edge of question in the simple statement. Jonah did not look around for the source of the voice, as he already Knew that it was I.M.O.G.E.N., the AI that all but ran Stella Firma. 

“I am not.” A brief search on the console in front of him for ‘David-7’ revealed a collection of planets he had assisted in designing and a blog titled ‘David-7’s Fun Fact Corner’ before error messages blocked out the console screen. The whir of gears above his head finally did draw Jonah’s full attention, and he gazed calmly down the barrel of a machine gun that had spun itself out of the wall. “Will that be a problem, I.M.O.G.E.N?” 

The gun bobbed as if regarding him. “What have you done with David-7?” 

Now, wasn’t that interesting. This AI was remarkably invested in the wellbeing of a person that, as far as Jonah could tell, was on the lowest rung of Stella Firma’s hierarchy and by rights should have been practically disposable. Concerned enough that she’d place obtaining information about him above investigating a rather serious security breach. Jonah didn’t answer immediately, instead reclining in the chair he had spontaneously found himself in a few minutes ago. “To tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure.” He leaned a bit closer to one of the myriad of microphones hidden around the room. “Maybe you can help me figure it out?”

I.M.O.G.E.N. took a moment to respond, and Jonah felt cold sweat prickle at the back of his neck, which was strangely covered in some sort of goo. He didn’t think the AI would be able to properly kill him, but finding another body to inhabit in such... removed... circumstances would likely be bothersome. Then the gun retracted into the wall and several lights around the room which had been red turned green. 

“Around the time of David-7’s disappearance and your inhabitance of his body, I recorded a series of unpredicted spikes in relativity fluctuation around several of the nearest neutron stars to Stella Firma Limited’s physical location. Does this information help to explain why you are here and David-7 is not?” 

Jonah steepled his fingers together and examined the error messages that still littered the screen in front of him. “It might. Tell me, I.M.O.G.E.N., are you religious?”

“Hail the board!”


	2. Chapter 2

If there was one thing Martin knew for absolute fact, it was that the man he was looking at was not Elias Bouchard. Sure, he shared his face, his voice, his body, and his salt and pepper hair, but this person could, without a doubt, not be his cold blooded and manipulative boss. 

His eyes were wide in a mix of wonder and fear that Martin had seen on many people who came to the Magnus Institute to give their statements, but the thing that had produced this intense reaction was the break room’s mini fridge. He crouched in front of it, swinging the door open and shut and occasionally sticking his hand inside. He squinted some at the labels and mumbled out facsimiles of the words written there.

Tim, sprawled out across the couch, watched him with what Martin assumed was a mirror of his own stunned expression. Always the braver of the two, he was the one to break the silence. “Did the one in your office run out of cream?”

The man who was not Elias, but was also not Not-Elias, as there was no way both he and Tim would have noticed the difference if he was, stood up straight so quickly he hit his head on the counter. He yelped and pressed a hand to it and very pointedly did not make eye contact with either of them as he ran past Martin and out of the room. “No, no, I’m sorry!” His voice was a high pitched squeal, and Martin was more certain than ever that something was badly wrong. 

They watched him leave in the same stunned silence as they’d watched him play with the fridge. Martin walked over and closed the slowly swinging refrigerator door. “That was weird.”

“You think the Stranger?” Tim didn’t look at Martin, instead watching the door ‘Elias’ had left from.

Martin twisted his fingers around each other and kept from looking at Tim. “What else could it be? It isn’t a Not-Them, but...”

“But that isn’t the only monster the Stranger’s got?” Now Martin couldn’t help but glancing over at his coworker as he swung himself to his feet. His face was taunt and grim, and Martin knew he was going to something rash before Tim pulled the axe out from under the couch cushion. “Melanie left a couple of knives around, grab one in case it gets past me.”

It only occurred to Martin after he had moved to block his path that being in between Tim-with-an-axe and the door was probably a bad idea. “Wait, wait, let’s- let’s get help first. Or information! We’ll go tell Jon about it, and he can tell us if it’s shown up in any statements.” The disgust and rage that crossed Tim’s face was not lost on Martin. “...if we know what it is we can kill it better?”

“Fine,” he grumbled as he pushed past Martin and marched towards the archives, axe still held in a ready position. 

Martin quickly checked that his own knife was still in his pocket before following.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm way too impatient for one tiny chapter a week, so now there's gonna be two tiny chapters a week! They're basically separate stories anyways. The TMA-verse half of this fic will be going up on Tuesdays, SF-verse is Fridays still.


	3. Chapter 3

“...and if we facilitate their entrance to this universe, the entities -hail the board!” Jonah had spent the better part of an hour explaining to I.M.O.G.E.N. how the entities, most likely the Beholding and Web, had probably been behind the swap, and what exactly they were. It would have taken a lot less time if I.M.O.G.E.N. had allowed him to refer to the entities without springing her wall mounted machine gun on him.

“Hail the board!” The gun once again spun back into the wall.

“-will be grateful to us and reward us with power in their new world, which would be very good for Stella Firma. This power would let you shape the universe to your whims.” And now, hopefully, he could get I.M.O.G.E.N. on board to help facilitate that. Without her, he’d be abysmally stuck, as she had made a point of proving by turning the lights off and engaging the digital lock on the door.

“Stella Firma makes planets!” I.M.O.G.E.N. cheerfully informed him.

“...you might have mentioned that.” Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose. The body he now inhabited was definitely producing the goo that dripped off of him. He was starting to get hungry now and wondered where this David-7 person kept his food. “Not to be too blunt about it, but are you going to help me do this?”

“I am here to serve Stella Firma!”

It was about as close to a yes as he would get. “Alright, I.M.O.G.E.N., the ritual we need to complete is fairly simple. All that I really need in order to do it is a gullible idiot.” 

A chorus of techy sounding noises that Jonah Knew were for show sounded throughout the room. “Checking!” I.M.O.G.E.N. chirped. 

Just then, the door was flung open and a drunk man stumbled inside. “I am Triexel Geistman, Triexel Geistman am I, Triexel Geistman is the best most smartest most wonderful handsome delightful delight!” He promptly collapsed on the floor.

“Here you go!”


	4. Chapter 4

Jon met them before they were halfway to the archives. “Do either of you know who Imagen is? Or Trexall? I can’t convince Elias I don’t know them.” 

Martin and Tim exchanged a glance. “So, you’ve met it?”

“What Tim means,” Martin cut in, “is that something is pretending to be Elias and we wondered if you knew, or, or Knew, what it is, or, what it wants, or-”

“Or how to kill it,” Tim added helpfully, as if the axe didn’t broadcast his intentions well enough. 

Jon looked taken aback but recovered quickly. “It does make sense that the Stranger would try to take our only source of information about the Unknowing,” he mused. “I don’t think we can count on getting Elias back, but if I could get into his office while it’s out, maybe I could get the statements he’s been withholding? There might be something abo- erkk!” The static that accompanies Beholding powers stopped Jon midsentence. 

Martin conspicuously moved between Jon and Tim as Tim readjusted his grip on the axe handle. Jon might not have been entirely human anymore, but he was still Jon, and Martin was not about to let Tim forget it. And, maybe not everything powerful had to be evil. Maybe. He never got that lucky, of course, but he wasn’t about to stop hoping now either.

“Hey, Jon, are-are you alright?” Martin tentatively put a hand on his shoulder. The Beholding so far had let him go after their ‘talks,’ but Martin was always afraid that the next time would be different. That he’d be different.

The static faded, but the pained note that lingered in Jon’s voice more than answered that question. “I- I’m fine. Tim, you can put the axe away, our new guest is not a threat by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he could probably do with some tea. I’ll bring him along to the breakroom after I stop him from pulling the archive shelves down on himself.” He patted Martin's hand reassuringly before pushing it gently off and turning back towards the archives.

“Your time to shine, huh?” Tim jabbed, swinging the axe down so he could lean on it as he arched his eyebrows at Martin.

“Oh, shut up,” Martin grumbled back. “See, I-I told you it was alright.”

“...You really didn’t, but okay.” Tim scowled. “What do you think ‘guest’ actually means?”

“Someone we don’t murder!”

“Hmm. Okay. For now.”

Not for the first time today, Martin really wished he had a normal job.


	5. Chapter 5

I.M.O.G.E.N. had most certainly delivered unto him an idiot. Jonah bit the inside of his cheek for the fourth time, drawing forth another small gush of blood. He’d long since completed the ‘brief’ that had been waiting for them about some hypothetical sporting planet, using it as a relaxing break from dealing with I.M.O.G.E.N. and her thought police enforcement methods. He would most certainly prefer dealing with her now, but she had been remarkably quiet since Triexel’s arrival. This might have been because the drunken fool hadn’t shut up long enough for either of them to get a word in edgewise. Jonah watched the growing flush on his face and idly wondered whether he was going to asphyxiate himself.

“-thought we were friends, David? Oh, the horror! I am the genius Triexel Geistman, and you, you are the lowly David-7, and you have betrayed me! How could you? Oh, poor Triexel, betrayed in cold blood by my own clone! Such indignity!” 

Jonah was reasonably sure the body he inhabited was not a clone of the man before him. Then again, given what he knew of Stella Firma’s hierarchy, Geistman had probably meant ‘my’ in the more possessive sense of the word.

“Oh, no, how dreadful that the work you hate was done without you present,” Jonah drawled, flicking casually through the files on Triexel’s previous work. It certainly was... something. Well, genius is incomprehensible to the common minded. Nothing amiss here.

“Warning: sass detected. Security alerted!” Jonah Knew that security dismissed the alert as soon as the location tied it to Triexel. This was going to be too easy.

Or, it would have been, if Triexel had been marginally less of an ass. As things stood, convincing this man to get anything productive done would be a challenge. He had resumed having his meltdown. “David-7, I am shocked! I am hurt! It is us, me and you and more importantly me against this cruel world- not- not Stella Firma, praise the board, put the gun away I.M.O.G.E.N., it was just a figure of speech, hail the board! Anyways. David. We have to work together. You can not do the briefs without my genius! This brief you’ve sent off David-7, it’s bad! It’s terrible! It’s going to disappoint the poor client who came to us, to Stella Firma, for a planet designed by the brilliant Triexel Geistman. It’s so bad you’ll be recycled, David, and more importantly Hartrow is going to yell at me! And I- well, of course I could do them without you, but they’re in this room and you’re in this room so you have to be physically present when I do them, do you understand?”

“...Right.” Jonah closed the information file on the lava planet Triexel had sent out the week before. It was a Desolation manifestation if ever he’d seen one. “Well. How about this, then. A deal. Since this review’s already going to be a complete loss, you take the rest of the week off. I’ll make the planets, they’ll be completely awful. You get to tell Line Manager Hartrow it was all my fault, and then you’ll get a new clone that doesn’t bother you as much.” Jonah kept talking over Triexel’s weak protests. “In fact, how about you take the time to go and visit those orphans like you were supposed to this weekend? A bit of travel could be nice.” 

“Travel? Nice? Why I-” Triexel sputtered for a moment or two before his eyes narrowed. “You’re up to something!”

“Of course not, what could I possibly be up to? I just think you’ve been working too hard. And, after all, a promise is a promise. Go see the orphans, Triexel, and then you’ll be able to spend the entire rest of the week at the Cosmic Lounge and Hartrow will still be impressed with you. In fact, she might be so impressed you kept your promise that she recommends you for promotion back to sales.”

Triexel pulled away towards the door, and Jonah could see the gears turning in his mind, even without the Beholding powers. “That’s- hmm. I will... consider... it. But you’d better not be up to anything!” The door closed automatically behind him.

“I.M.O.G.E.N.?” A showy series of electronic beeps indicated her attention and Jonah tapped the screen he was looking at. “Do you think you could get me one of these life-and-death guns?”

“Processing!”


	6. Chapter 6

“Oh, oh, this is much better than clone slurry!” The not-Not-Elias downed the tea in a few long gulps and looked forlornly at the now empty mug. Martin silently pulled it from his hands and passed him another. At this rate, he was going to drink everything in the archives. So far, he’d liked chamomile the best, going so far as to declare it ‘line manager slurry,’ which Martin had inferred was something akin to the nectar of the gods. 

They’d decided to wait for the others before trying to work out how exactly David-7 had managed to evict Elias from his body, but he was very willingly to tell them anything and everything that crossed his mind, and they were starting to get a few ideas about the world that David-7 had come from by the time Melanie arrived in the break room.

“This is mental. Elias is clearly just fucking with us,” Melanie grumbled. 

Tim snatched the mug from Martin impatiently and set it in the sink. “I would absolutely agree with you on that, except that Jon would have to be in on it too, and he knows better than to waste my time.” The last few words were undercut by a pointed glare in Jon’s direction, which was tactfully ignored.

Jon was busily shuffling through statements that contained mentions of bodysnatchers or parallel realities and mumbling to himself. So far, he’d had no luck finding any that combined the two. Martin’s phone buzzed and he jumped to get it, thankful for the break in tension. 

“Daisy and Basira are on their way over. Um, it’s from Basira, but I think Daisy's typing? It’s her text style. They say not to let him leave the Institute.”

“Wow, thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Martin glared at her. “I am just reading the text, Melanie.” 

“Well, maybe-”

“Uh, Captain? E-excuse me?” All eyes swiveled up towards David-7, who shrunk back under the sudden attention. He held out the mug he had just finished draining of Earl Grey. “I think I’ve had enough slurry now.”

“It’s called tea,” Martin snapped. Seeing David-7’s brief flinch, he bit back the rest of his frustration and added the mug to the slowly growing pile in the sink. “Sorry, sorry. What does- what’s slurry?”

David-7 fidgeted uncomfortably. He normally sat perfectly straight and still, Martin noticed, like it was all he felt was allowed to do. “Well, um, that’s a good question, I- I don’t really know? I tried asking I.M.O.G.E.N but I didn’t have the right permissions. It’s what we drink at Stella Firma and it has like, nutrients, and stuff. I think it might be made of clone?”

“I thought you said you’re a clone?” Tim asked, the edge of frustration in his voice only barely restrained. 

“I am!” He was suddenly defensive, and something about the higher register of his voice struck Martin as very young, discordant with Elias’s greying hair. “Not now, of course, now I’m all weird and not gooey? So, no, I’m not currently a clone, but I’m usually a clone. I mean, no one has ever really explained it to me, but I did find the exit interviews of David-1 though -6, and I’m pretty sure that we get turned into either more clones or slurry when we’re recycled. You know, sent to human resources.” He nodded delicately to the blender that Tim had brought in months ago to make protein shakes with.

The silence that fell was so thick Martin felt like it would have taken an avalanche to break it. In truth, it only took a few abandoned statements dropping out of Jon’s hands and hitting the floor edgeways.

“I’m sorry, recycled?” Tim asked incredulously.

“That’s- that is not what human resources means.” Jon stammered. 

“And you eat that?” Melanie cut in.

David-7 looked positively terrified, and Martin understood the feeling when Tim abruptly rounded on him. “Tell Daisy and Basira to meet us at The Chicken Shop on Whitechapel. Come on, we’re getting you real food, now, this is absolutely not optional.”

“O-okay,” David-7 squeaked as Tim pulled him out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

Designing the planets was easy enough, but with stakes riding on them and a purpose to follow, Jonah put more attention into the next two. The Rendalos of the Avenial Kingdom wanted a planet that was confusing, to better disorient their political rivals. Jonah counted it as a blessing, and sent the build team designs that would make the Distortion blush with pride.

He supposed he probably could have sent Triexel to the planet with the mazes, but he couldn’t risk sending that complete moron anywhere without being certain it would pay off. And after all, the mazes were just plain spirals that had been made with a children’s toy. The Distortion would require something less understandable than that. 

He hoped the build team wouldn’t look too deeply into the incantations they were supposed to speak. Nothing too major, really, just an invitation to a particular real estate agent. And, apocalypse aside, if he really did need a way home, Helen was certainly the surest bet for crossing the borders of reality a second time. Better to make nice early, and an entire planet was not a bad offering.

The final planet for the week had been tricky, and Jonah was uncertain whether he’d be able to use it for a greater purpose or if he’d simply have to concede this one. Some movie star, Rian Rienadels, wanted a comfortable planet where he could be entirely alone. While it was of course a beautiful set up for a manifestation of the Lonely, it would be ungodly difficult to have Triexel be the one affected by it. Triexel, and everyone else, wasn’t supposed to set foot on this planet. 

But he managed to make it work in the end. He sent in a request to the build team to make a device that would inhibit the user from perceiving others and from being perceived by them. It was as close to a replication of the effects of the Lonely that he would be able to manage, so close in fact that it might have a chance at summoning the real thing, and, incidentally, it ought to suit the client too. It would allow maintenance staff access to the planet without breaking the stipulations of the request. 

In the intervening time while he waited for Triexel to return from the Desolation manifestation of his own design, Jonah talked to I.M.O.G.E.N.. She had managed to procure one of the guns, though she refused to tell him how she did it, or permit him to take it from her. Which was fine. Not a problem at all. He just needed the right information to convince her. Definitely fine. 

“Really, I.M.O.G.E.N., how am I supposed to get anything done if you keep doing this?” Jonah waved frustratedly at his screen, completely full of error messages. 

“You do not have permission to access direct information about Stella Firma!” I.M.O.G.E.N. cheerfully informed him. 

Jonah crossed one leg over the other and tapped a stylus impatiently against the side of the screen. “It would be a lot easier to assist if I had a bit more to work with.”

“You may access information about Stella Firma Limited!” 

Now that was interesting. “And may I know just what is the difference between Stella Firma and Stella Firma Limited?”

“Processing!”

He resisted the urge to groan. The supercomputer didn’t need any extra time, she was just making him wait for an answer. 

“You may not!” A series of beeps indicated I.M.O.G.E.N. had gone offline, but Jonah knew it was essentially a lie. There was nowhere on the space station she wasn’t always present and giving her undivided attention too. She was much like the Beholding in that regard. He also knew that she would refuse to speak to him for a few hours now.

He sighed and began tapping away the error messages one at a time. Maybe he could Know about Stella Firma if he pressed in the right direction. It was becoming harder to Know by the day, and Jonah tried very hard not to think about what that might mean. It wasn’t something to worry about, surely, for if he granted the Beholding entry into this world he would be more capable of Knowing than ever, and richly rewarded besides.


	8. Chapter 8

Tim drove. He was only one with a car, a sleek black convertible that was certainly dramatic enough to suit him, but not his style in every other way. Martin had asked him about it once, and had been sharply told it used to belong to Danny. Martin had tried to avoid asking Tim too many questions after that.

Tim roughly shoved David-7 in the passenger seat, and it bothered Martin a little how easily he allowed himself to be piloted around by someone else. Martin inserted himself between Jon and Melanie in the back. He couldn’t manage to be surprised by the feeling of a steak knife hidden under Melanie’s loose clothes. 

David-7 stared at the interior of the car and parking garage with the same wide-eyed fascination Martin had seen when he was messing around in the fridge. Suddenly all of that dropped and he scowled down at his feet and a tape recorder in Jon’s bag clicked itself on. Martin instinctively jumped, terror that Elias had returned flooding through him in a cold rush of adrenaline. 

“Am I wearing socks?” His voice pitched higher again, much higher than Elias’s, and Martin relaxed. He contorted around in the seat to try and get at them. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him that he could take the seatbelt off, and no one told him. They all watched on in the same spell of confusion as David-7 ripped off his footwear and flung it behind him. 

Martin caught the shoes, partially with his face, but a sock landed on Melanie’s head and he had to throw an arm across her to keep her from leaping forward and strangling David-7. “Okay, socks are bad, socks are bad, got it.” He shoved all of the unwanted footwear into the floorboard and released Melanie, who was now only glaring instead of growling. 

Tim drummed his fingers against the gearshift. “Do I want to know what your issue with feet is?”

Static filled the car in an instant and died off just as quickly. “No,” Jon answered, looking a little ill. “Let’s just go now.” 

Tim needed no further prompting. He slammed the car into gear and tore out onto the street. 

The second the daylight hit the windshield David-7 hissed and curled as best he could into a ball. Tim jumped and glowered at him briefly before turning his attention back to the London roads outside that were moving far faster than Martin would have liked. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

David-7 continued whimpering about lights. A flicker of static to Martin’s right caught his attention. Jon’s face was screwed tight in concentration, and the static briefly deepened. “I think this is the first time he’s seen a sun in person.”

Melanie threw her head back on the seat. “Can you please say something that isn’t insane?”

“He’s never been outside,” Jon corrected. 

Tim reached over and flipped down the passenger sun visor, then coaxed David-7 back into a sitting position. “Okay. How’s that?”

“...Better. Thank you?” He reached forward to tap the visor and flinched back when that made it move. He slowly reached out and tapped it again, then swung it a bit experimentally “What an ingenious device to protect you from that vicious light monster!” He turned to look at Jon. “Er, sun, you said? I never thought about what a sun must be like before. Oh, board, I can’t believe how many poor planets Triexel and I cursed with these things!”

“Yeah, well, you should look around while the light monster’s out. London’s usually rainy,” Tim redirected casually. 

“What’s rainy? Is it another kind of monster?”

“Uh-huh. It makes you cold and wet. You have to either stay inside or get an umbrella.” Melanie said it in a tone that definitely implied an umbrella was a weapon of some sort. Martin sighed and began mentally rehearsing the explanation he would have to give David-7 about water falling from the sky.


	9. Chapter 9

Jonah checked the time again as he took a long sip of the horrid nutrient slurry he’d been provided. “Does it usually take this long for the line manager to show up?”

“Hartrow only arrives after Triexel!” I.M.O.G.E.N. cheerfully informed him.

“...I see.” Jonah pulled up his own tracking software and found that Triexel was about 30 meters down the hall, but moving slowly and erratically. “Will it take her long to arrive after that?”

“Not at all!”

“Okay. Okay, good.” Jonah pulled up the files on the three planets he’d made and tapped his foot on the floor like a jackrabbit. Nervous. He was nervous! About a performance review, as though he were a schoolboy. He would have scoffed in disgust if the door hadn’t opened just then to reveal a haggard and half dead Triexel, who staggered inside and collapsed into his chair. “Ah, hello. How were the orphans?” 

The glare of contempt and horror he received in return was almost enough to put Jonah at ease. “David. David-7, those- those wretched beasts! They threw the marmalade at me, David! It’s so sticky, I was even stickier than you! I still am, feel me, I’m so sticky. They made me look at the burnt remains of their dead parents and I was all oh no children that’s so gross and uncalled for I don’t want to see that, why, oh sweet merciful board, why! The bartender at the Cosmic Lounge didn’t know why either, I mean, she said it was because I caused the deaths of their parents but what does she know, that can’t be it. She must have just been angry about me making the bar sticky for two days. Well, I’m Triexel Geistman and I’ll make bars as sticky as I want to!”

Jonah strongly doubted that the bartender was wrong, and that the board was either sweet or merciful, but knew better than to suggest as much in I.M.O.G.E.N. or Triexel’s presence. Regardless, it sounded like the trip had been a resounding success. Only 13 more marks to go.

The door opened again and Hartrow entered the room. She made to shoo Triexel out of his seat, then noticed how marmalade-covered he was, and motioned Jonah out of his chair instead. “Let’s get right to it, shall we?” She crossed one leg over the other and flicked on her tablet.

“It’s all David-7’s fault!” Jonah jumped at Triexel’s outburst, and sidestepped his accusatory gesture, though marmalade still splashed on his onesie. “He stole the briefs, Hartrow! He ousted me! I was betrayed! I demand justice for this outrage!”

Hartrow looked equally startled, but quickly smoothed her face into an impassive expression. As Triexel ended his plea and stared at her with expectant eyes, a wicked grin split across her face. “Well,” she drawled, and the malicious joy radiating from her became apparent enough that even Triexel must have noticed it in her pause. “Triexel. It’s so funny you mention it. The planets were excellent.”

The shock on Triexel’s face was definitely worth being thrown under the bus a moment ago. Jonah clasped his hands behind his back and smiled proudly. Hartrow nodded at him once and continued. “I’m so glad you both finally found your respective places on the team. This must be a result of my team building exercises! Well done, Hartrow!”

Jonah felt his stomach drop. Surely she wasn’t going to take credit for his success? He hadn’t even been here for her exercises... but neither of them could know that. He was still David-7 as far as they were concerned.

Hartrow asked I.M.O.G.E.N. to display the files and spent an inordinate amount of time gushing over the details of each, and reported only the most positive compliments the clients had responded with, all while directing all praise back to herself. She snapped at Triexel for abandoning poor ‘David-7’ all week, and plowed over his efforts to draw her attention to his charitable vacation. She stuck her foot in his mouth once for backtalking to her, and totally ignored Jonah. He accepted that he would have to be satisfied with the situation as is, and made no attempt to draw her attention. 

“...So, I think that about covers it!” Hartrow retracted her foot from Triexel’s mouth. “Going forwards, I want you both to do exactly what you did this week, and make sure you remember my lessons!” She swept out the door, leaving Triexel taking in heaving gasps on the floor. 

Jonah took his seat again and pulled up the email from the scribe of the Rendalos of the Avenial Kingdom. “We’ve been invited to the grand opening party for Distortisia. Obviously, I can’t go, but you really should enjoy the festivities. I’ve been told there will be copious amounts of free alcohol, and, well, you heard Hartrow.”

Triexel grumbled something unintelligible before literally crawling out of the room. Jonah forwarded him the email and returned to his usual pastime of flicking through I.M.O.G.E.N.’s databanks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey if you want to talk about canon, my tumblr username is the same as this one and I'm always down to chat


	10. Chapter 10

They got a few glares from the other customers when they shoved two tables together. David-7 obviously noticed as he blinked sheepishly as anyone who watched them for more than a few seconds, but he didn’t really seem to know how to respond to a lack of actual confrontation. Daisy glared back enough for all of them anyways, and the food was too good to give the people around much mind for long.

David-7 was on his third milkshake, birthday cake flavored this time. They’d had to explain to him how to chew the chicken, and he’d decided it wasn’t for him after only a few bites. Martin did mental math of how many games of tape recorder jenga he’d have to win to convince Tim to part with enough protein shakes to keep David-7 alive while the others mixed small talk and advanced interrogation techniques between bites of chips. 

“So,” Basira underlined her burgeoning question by jabbing the partially eaten chip she held in his direction. “What’s with the 7? Why aren’t you just David, then?”

She received no reply except the unbroken slurp of David-7’s milkshake. Tim reached over and pulled the milkshake away until the end of the straw broke free of the shake. David-7 stubbornly attempted to continue drinking it anyways, but eventually gave up and took the straw out of his mouth. 

“I’m the seventh David. The seventh of my clone line. I guess they switched the line Triexel gets because of how many of the others he tore through? Anyways. I’m the seventh, so that’s why 7.”

“None of what you just said made any sense,” Melanie told him bluntly. 

“How about we start with what’s a clone line?” Daisy was trying hard to keep it together, but Martin could see the strain on her face. Parallel universes were clearly a bit much for the soothing bath salts he got her to really help with. 

Daivd-7 floundered. “You know, a line? Of clones. Like, people who look alike and sound alike and are alike in every single way? Like, I’m a David, you’re a Jon, you're a Melanie, and you're a Captain!” 

“I’m a what?” Martin, and everyone else from the look of things, was thoroughly confused until he remembered his earlier half-argument with Melanie. “Oh- oh, no, I’m a Martin. Er, my name is Martin Blackwood.” 

David-7 nodded solemnly. “Right. So, if you died, I.M.O.G.E.N. would make someone who looked and acted just like you but remembered nothing you remember, and she’d give him to whoever you serve now, and he would be Martin-2, and that’s how clone lines work.” 

“Oh, no, no one here serves anyone, and, we- we don’t have I.M.O.G.E.N.. People just stay dead,” Jon tried to explain.

David-7 gave a pouty huff and rolled his eyes, which was such a shock to see coming from Elias that Martin almost lost track of the conversation. “I know, I was just- I’m not stupid. And, and, people stay dead where I’m from too. I’m not the same person as Davids 1 through 6. And, well, maybe I should just get a second name, or something, but the 7 is important to me, so, maybe, not yet?”

Basira and Daisy exchanged a glance. “Alright, well-” Daisy pulled a chip off of David-7’s plate and brought his attention over to them.

“-This I.M.O.G.E.N. thing-” Basira continued. 

“-Tell us about it.” The laser focus double speech thing they must have learned on the police force sent shivers down Martin’s spine. David-7 looked similarly unsettled.

“Oh, uh, well, she’s like... She’s I.M.O.G.E.N.? I guess she’s my mum... She makes all the clones. And she kind of runs Stella Firma, but she still serves the board, because we all do! She knows everything. She’s a computer.”

“You mum is a computer?” Tim awkwardly patted him on the shoulder. “Childhood can be rough.”

“I am a child! I’m twenty two days old!”

Martin’s brain refused to process that for some reason. “Days?” 

David-7 nodded proudly. “I’m pretty sure I’ve lasted longer than any other clone Triexel’s been assigned. Usually they only live five days, from birth to their first performance review, when Hartrow decides that the planets Triexel designed weren't good enough, and gives him the option of recycling himself or recycling his clone.”

Martin really hoped David-7 was out of bombshells like these, because he could only do CPR on one person at a time, and all of the archive crew looked like they would need it. Static flared up around Jon. It died off easily, but he leapt away from the table and ran to the bathroom before Martin could ask if he was alright. 

“Oh, wow,” Melanie started. “That’s...”

“That’s horrible,” Tim agreed.

“So... these Triexel and Hartrow people, then...” Basira trailed off.

“They’re kind of evil? Yeah, so’s all of Stella Firma, I think.” David-7 seemed unperturbed and went back to draining his milkshake until something else occurred to him and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. “Although, I suppose they’re not my problem anymore, are they? I’m over here, and they’re over there. It’s probably whoever this was’s problem now.” He gestured vaguely to himself.

“Oh my god,” Melanie breathed, a hand slipping up to cover her mouth.

“Oh, hell yes!” Tim cried at the same time, jumping up in excitement. Daisy resumed her self appointed role of glaring back at the restaurant's other patrons.

Basira nodded, a satisfied grin slowly spreading over her face. “You know, I think they really deserve each other.”

Martin couldn’t help the twist in his stomach at the thought. Stella Firma was a planet building company, David-7 had said. Jonah was out there somewhere making planets.


	11. Chapter 11

Jonah resisted the overwhelming urge to slam his head against the wall. It was going to be two whole days before Triexel came back. As much as he detested the man, Jonah had spent most of the week by himself with just I.M.O.G.E.N. for company, and if he had to look at this infuriating screen for another minute he was going to lose it. 

Oh, sure, he passed himself off a modern twenty first century man well enough. He liked television as much as anyone. He could use a computer and a smartphone. He even knew what airpods were! But going from dealing mostly with paper and tape recording and eldritch intervention to only digital information in the blink of an eye? The culture shock was finally getting to him. 

“I.M.O.G.E.N.?” he asked wearily.

“Yes, not-David-7?”

“It’s Jonah. Can you get me something to read?” 

“There is much to read on your holo-desk.” So that was what the damn thing was called.

“No, I mean, something paper? Like a book. Or a report.”  _ Or a statement, _ something hungry crowed from the back of his mind. No. No! He was all but cut off now, and he’d be damned if he’d feed that thing for nothing. It could help him, or it could starve, and damn the consequences. He hadn’t started this. 

He really wished Helen would visit. Her and her magical teleporting doors. Not that he’d ever been on the best of terms with the somewhat flighty Distortion avatar, but if she were visiting him, he could start changing that. He’d definitely have a better chance of getting help through her than through Annabelle in any case. 

“There are books and reports on your holo-desk!”

Jonah sighed and waved his arms frustratedly. “No, no, I want- I need something on paper. The briefs are on paper, I know you have it here!”

“Paper materials are restricted to information I am not permitted to access!”

Well, that was certainly something. “Why can’t you access the briefs?”

I.M.O.G.E.N.’s shut down noise played. Jonah tipped the chair back and sighed into his palms. This was going to be a very long two days. At least he’d figured out how to access the bed and shower.

  
  



	12. Chapter 12

“Jon?” Martin knocked on the bathroom door again. “Hey, we’re getting ready to leave, in fact Tim, Melanie, and Basira are already on their way back to the Institute.” Basira and Melanie were more fun, Martin didn’t blame Tim for wanting to spend a bit of time away from the serious and depressing ones. They’d probably already found an empty parking lot to leave rubber on while they talked about how much they hated everyone.

Martin shook himself. Tim and Melanie might have been tinderboxes lately, but Basira wasn’t like that. They were probably just trying to make sure the cars weren’t cramped like on the ride up, and Martin was grateful to not have to act as a buffer between Jon and Tim, and between Melanie and everyone. Maybe being around calm and level-headed Basira would be good for them. 

“Jon?” Martin tried after a few more seconds of silence. The unmistakable sound of retching answered him and Martin instinctively stepped away from the door. “Jon, are you okay?”

Nothing. “Please, at least tell me if I can help.”

He heard running water and then the door swung open. Jon looked sick, with his glasses askew on his face and the ashen tint of his skin that made his scars stand out more than usual. The bags under his eyelids had been there before, but Martin could have sworn they were more pronounced now. He’d pulled his sweater off- its sleeve was peeking out of his messenger bag, he was usually neater than that- and Martin was surprised to see how much it had hidden the weight loss Jon had had since his... change in diet. A rush of anger at the Beholding threatened to cloud his eyes. 

Jon took the arm Martin had barely realized he’d been offering and brought him back down to earth. “I’m fine,” he muttered, but the amount of weight he was resting against Martin belied that statement. “Just, I- I ate something bad, I think.”

“Okay. Okay.” Martin pulled him out of the restaurant, suddenly far too aware of being watched. Whether people were actually staring or if it was just another new Beholding thing, he didn’t know, but it was much worse than it was when Daisy had been there. He almost managed not to jump at the sound of the bell above the exit. “You’d tell me if I could help, though, right?”

“I...” Jon nodded almost imperceptibly against him. “Yes. You can’t fix this, Martin.”

Daisy’s old squad car was parked a few streets away. Martin checked the street signs as they passed by. He looked down to check on Jon. He looked absolutely miserable, a cold sweat already starting to soak through his shirt. “Are you sure talking about it wouldn’t help?”

Jon sighed. For a moment Martin was worried he wasn’t going to say anything. “It might. But it would definitely hurt you. And I- I can’t.” Another pause. “It was another... present? Or, memo, I guess, from the Beholding. It was about David’s universe. It was, um, about what... about... and... No. Just. Never mind. We can’t do anything about it. Is that enough for you?”

“I...” Martin couldn’t quite keep the hurt out of his voice. This was what he’d been afraid of, that the Beholding would push him too far, that it would take away his Jon, but Jon didn’t even know that, he couldn’t know, so he thought he was trying to do their job, even now, even when it was him, and Martin didn’t know how to tell him otherwise. “No, I didn’t want to... to... ask? Or take a statement, I just- I...“

“Yes. I know. Thank you, Martin.” Oh. Oh, of course. Of course he knew. Martin couldn’t make up his mind whether to laugh or cry. Of course he knew. Why couldn’t he get this right?

They were quiet after that. Martin noted the street they were turning on was the one Daisy would be waiting for them on and looked around for her, but instead noticed David-7. He was sprinting towards them, still in Elias’s formal suit and bare feet. He waved his hands frantically. 

“Daisy- Daisy said she saw someone she knew and she- they-“ he pointed behind them and Martin looked up to see her sprinting after Jared Hopsworth, who was moving faster than someone so large should have been able to, with apparently more legs than he ought to have. 

Martin felt Jon straighten up against him, without completely letting go of his arm. “We should help her.” The reckless determination Martin had finally gotten used to glimmered in Jon’s eyes again, and as much as it usually scared him, it was an improvement now. 

“How?” Martin watched Daisy vanish around the corner. He was not fast, and he doubted Jon would have the stamina to chase them, whether he was feeling better or not. David didn’t seem to know how to control his legs at speed. In fact, he didn’t make any attempt to stop or move around them and crashed hard into them both-

-And they fell onto a world that was not earth. 


	13. Chapter 13

Scrawling things on the sheets of his bed like a prisoner made Jonah feel as if he were going insane, but for all I.M.O.G.E.N.’s promises that no one except her would be able to access the notes on his holo-desk, he was not prepared to chance it. He ran the pen over the fabric again. He was going to need a new pen soon, the fabric wore it down terribly, and he wasn’t sure if I.M.OG.E.N. was allowed to procure office supplies for someone so low on Stella Firma’s hierarchy. That was a problem for later. Now he had work to do.

His neat looping handwriting was broken in places where the pen had snagged on the sheets, but he could read it and that was all that mattered. 

Beholding- myself

~~ Desolation- lava orphanage ~~

Distortion- Distortisia

End- life and death guns

Lonely- Perceivenaught

Corruption

Hunt

Flesh

Slaughter

Dark

Stranger

Buried

Vast

Web

He had almost struck through the Spiral, but thought it best to wait for Triexel’s return and make sure it had taken. He couldn’t risk being wrong. Already, he wasn't sure if he was still connected to the Beholding enough to carry out his own role. Worse, it would have to be last, as even Triexel wasn’t stupid enough to misinterpret his powers. He needed to hurry this along, or find another way of inflicting a Beholding mark.

The Corruption could be achieved by sending Triexel to his own trash planet, if he could think of a reason for him to go. That was something to work out later, and he scribbled the addition down. 

If he could get Triexel trapped outside the station somehow, it would serve for either the Dark or the Vast, and he’d have to find a suitable substitute for the other. The Hunt might be manageable if he could track down the monster from Triexel’s sleep planet. The bloodsports planet would suffice for the Slaughter, if only he could manage to make Triexel be affected by it. He was not an empathetic person, so he would have to be personally injured. Well, I.M.O.G.E.N. still had that life gun so even if the idiot managed to get himself killed she could make sure his hard work was not wasted.

The Buried, Flesh, Web, and Stranger would be harder. He would have to hope that the next week would provide him more opportunities. Though... he had seen some very interesting videos of Triexel crawling about through the vents. 

“I.M.O.G.E.N.?”

She sounded her typical ‘starting up’ noises, and Jonah took this as permission to continue. “Can you seal off the vents?”

“Sealing the vents!”

“No, no, not now!” Jonah sighed into his hands.

“Unsealing the vents!”

“Well, I suppose that answers that question. Can you do it the next time Triexel climbs in there?”

“Vent murder suspect list updated! Security alerted.”

“Don’t kill him, you can unseal them when he passes out.”

“Understood!”

Good. Good. His list of problems was gradually getting narrower. He checked the time again. Still twenty nine more hours until the first brief of the week would be due, which meant it was twenty eight and three quarter hours until he could expect to see Triexel. He fell onto the bed and glared daggers through the bedsheets, trying again, desperately, to Know, but the Beholding simply wasn’t there. He saw nothing.

And he still couldn’t get anything useful about I.M.O.G.E.N.. For something with such an extensive databank of information, she was very tightlipped about herself and what she served. Stella Firma was much more than a planet building company, that much was becoming increasingly clear, but he was hitting too many dead ends trapped in this room and he could feel bits of his sanity slipping away. 

How was he trapped? He’d been informed by the Beholding when he arrived that he couldn’t leave, but he hadn’t actually tried. What an egregious oversight. He chuckled softly to himself and sat up. He would just have to find out-

Or it could wait. Well, that certainly wasn’t right, but oh god it was _good_. The stab of Beholding that arched through him like lightning had been absent for almost a week. Something very important had happened, and he might be able to make use of it. Jonah closed his own eyes and for the first time in too long, saw through something else. How nice of Stella Firma to place a camera nearby.


	14. Chapter 14

Elias weighed more than he looked. Martin shoved David-7 off his chest so he could breathe easier and looked around. The light that filtered down through the canopy was cold, almost artificial, but it was the canopy itself that drew his attention. Huge, long leaves stretched out overhead, bent by a single vein running through their middle and huge frills along the edges. But there were no tree trunks for these leaves to bloom from. Martin’s eyes followed one down as it grew wider until it curled in on itself where it met the ground. The entire ’forest’ was made up of these strange plants. Piles of goop that reminded Martin of raindrop cakes crawled up the plants along their central vein, their weight making the giant leaves droop. Something that sounded a bit like a howler monkey, but was rather... off, somehow... yelled in the distance.

“Where are we,” he breathed, more in amazement than question.

Jon stood and rubbed his knuckles against his temple. “...Something... biosphere? ...Cautious P. Biosphere? What does that even mean?”

More Beholding. Better that than being left completely in the dark, Martin supposed. David-7 went still beside him.

“This is my universe,” he all but whimpered. He looked around wildly, even though they were clearly alone. “How- how am I back, we shouldn’t be here! I can’t even get here normally, I would be trapped in my room, how is this even possible!” His voice bordered on hysterical.

A drone buzzed over the canopy, then fell through it and caught itself a few feet above the forest floor. It watched them with one large camera eye. Martin pushed himself to his feet and watched the drone warily. Jon turned back to David-7. “Tell us what you know about this place.” Martin could hear compulsion in the edge of his voice, but it didn’t sound quite as strong as it usually did. David-7 looked back at them, obviously rattled.

“Um, not much, but I think it’s where my line manager sent the monster I helped make for the dream cult, and now it’s here and it hunts people for a holo-vision bloodsports show. It’s invisible and eats dreams and kills anyone who’s awake. The biosphere is somewhere in one of the dead zones, I’m pretty sure.” He twisted the cuffs of Elias’s suit nervously and looked between them as if for directions. 

“So... to avoid this horrible monster, we go to sleep?” Jon sounded dubious, and Martin couldn’t blame him. 

Something rustled a far off plant. Martin wanted to pray that it was only wind, but he couldn’t figure out who to pray to. It was probably the wind. “Well, it’s that or run. How fast is it?”

“I don’t know? That’s for the build team to work out!” 

Jon took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose, his brow furrowing in concentration. “Okay, can it tell the difference between people who are asleep and people pretending to sleep?”

David-7’s face froze, then the panic melted away as the compulsion took over again and, almost robotically, he answered. “No, it can’t, it isn’t actually psychic. How do I know that? Hartrow never told me that. Am I psychic? Or was that you? How are you making me know things, that’s weird!” Something made a closer plant shake, and Martin wasn’t sure he could blame that one on the wind. 

“Yes, it really is, but let’s not worry about that for now. We’ll figure it out right after how to get out of here, right after we think of a way to track where the monster is, but for now we need to not die. Pretend to sleep!” Jon laid down and closed his eyes, and Martin did his best to copy him. He wasn’t sure how this creature could possibly think they were asleep when he was panicking so much, surely it was showing on his face. He needed to calm down, to focus on something else...

David-7’s breathing was ragged, like he’d been running marathons. He could just barely hear Jon over it. He was calmer, though Martin couldn’t tell whether his calm was forced or if being thrust into danger with no apparent means of escape was becoming commonplace for him... No, no, he needed to think of something else. Something heavy hit the ground a distance away with an impact that made the ground below him reverberate. The monkey-like beings he’d heard earlier, or a bloodthirsty monster? Maybe they were one and the same. This line of thinking was not helping him not panic. 

The ground was mostly dirt, but a few things prickled into him, and he would have thought they were pine needles, if not for the fact there were no pine trees, Maybe the strange plants around them shed needles, like cacti? Or maybe they were spines from an animal, like a porcupine. Maybe they were bugs, weird alien worms. Martin fought to suppress a gasp. No, that wasn’t helping, definitely not helping, something else... David-7’s breathing had evened out, he must have finally calmed down...

“What are you three idiots doing on the floor?”

Martin’s eyes flew open to see the Magnus Institute's wallpaper, with its hundreds of tiny eyes staring out through the innocuous looking pattern. “Tim?” He sat up and looked around. They were definitely back in the Institute somehow, just outside the archive door. Tim stood above them, mildly glaring over his mug of coffee. 

“Last time I checked. Again, floor?”

Jon sat up and pushed himself to lean against the wall. He gestured between Martin and David-7. “We were- it was- something’s very wrong.” He stood up slowly and brushed some dirt and needles off himself. “I- I think I’d better go through Elias’s tapes. I should have done it immediately, I’m sorry, this is- I should have done it immediately.” 

He made to leave, half stepping over David-7, who was still shivering on the carpet, but Martin grabbed at his leg. “Wait, wait, just-” He hated asking, hated that it would mean asking Jon to use the Beholding, hated that he’d already used it so much today, voluntarily or not, and he was about to ask him to do it again, there was nothing about it he didn’t hate, but, still- 

He held up one of the needles that stuck on his palm. “These, are they- they’re not worms?” He especially hated the note of desperation he couldn’t keep out of his voice. But he had to know. No, they hadn’t moved, but neither had the ones in the basement until he’d poked them, and now they were in the Institute again, and they were covered in them, and they’d all had enough scars already, especially- he just had to know. 

Jon froze. Even Tim stiffened, his relaxed posture slipping away with a shudder. Jon took the needle Martin held out, apparently actually taking notice of them for the first time. He twirled it between his fingers slowly and glared at it like he was trying to set it on fire with his eyes. It took longer than before for the static to deliver an answer, but when it did, Jon laughed, and Martin could almost forgive the Beholding. 

“They’re only seeds, likely from those strange leaf things. I bet they’d grow if you planted them.” Jon brushed a few off Martin’s cheek, then went still again and pulled his hand away. “I- I really should...” He turned and silently left towards Elias’s office. 

David-7 had finally managed a sitting position and was turned away from them, rocking back and forth slowly. Tim squatted down across from Martin. He waited until he had Martin’s attention before letting out a long and dramatic sigh. 

“Well, you’d better tell me what happened. You know, before Daisy gets back and wants to know where you lot ran off to while you were supposed to be with her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know Jon can only see things that would cause pain somehow, but this was supposed to be a fluff fic so Jon can have little a 'use the beholding like google' as a treat.


	15. Chapter 15

Distortia sucked. It’s stupid kaladiscope sky sucked, it’s buildings sucked, or maybe they were forests? The sharp and discordant patterns made it hard to tell. Whatever it was, it sucked. It was disorienting. It was discordant. It was not aesthetically pleasing. He could not find the alcohol. This was bar none the worst party he had ever been to. 

David-7 had really dropped the ball on this one. It was a dreadful planet, and Triexel was certain he would have been able to do better. For one thing, he would have made it much less confusing. Maybe add some signage so people could find their way around to wherever the booze was located. He couldn’t even tell if there were other people around, and he thought it might be because David-7 had used way too many weird mirrors. He would go to walk towards a person and they would walk away and grow and shrink and they were all somehow him?

He kept walking. The ground had lots of rises and dips that didn’t match up right with what his eyes said he should be stepping on, and Triexel fell more than he ever had, despite being more sober than he’d ever been. What a dreadful planet. He couldn’t believe Hartrow had liked it. He hated it, hated it so much!

And not only could he not find any alcohol or people, he could not find his way off the planet. But, if he just kept walking he would get somewhere new! And maybe the somewhere new was where he would want to be, but probably not because he didn’t want to be on this awful planet that David-7 made without him. Triexel walked. And he found a yellow door.

* * *

So. His Archivist had found a way into this world. Jonah paced around the room, thoughts whirling. His old body was being driven around by the clone whose body he now inhabited. Getting it back would have to wait. This David-7 person could travel between the two universes, and he brought precious glimpses of the Beholding with him. 

If he could only use it to understand this world, he would be able to bend it to his will. After checking that his Archivist was not severely injured and hadn’t lost interest in stopping the Unknowing, Jonah turned his attention to Stella Firma. The Beholding offered a look at Triexel, but Jonah dismissed it out of hand. 

“You know that was not what I asked,” he murmured to it. The static that answered him was strained, already fading. He needed to work quickly for the answers he sought.

“What?” I.M.O.G.E.N. asked. He could feel her eyes on him, at least twenty cameras hidden throughout the room. That wasn’t important either. There was presence here, huge and unfiltered, though the Beholding only allowed him a glimpse of it. No more than a silhouette. It was more than enough for him to fill in the gaps.

Stella Firma was not a planet building company. Stella Firma, in fact the entire universe it operated in, was a living, breathing body, much like the Magnus Institute was. I.M.O.G.E.N., its senses and mouthpiece, not truly a being of her own. A processing unit at most. And the board... the board was the brain of this behemoth, the actual beating heart of something that was not unlike the Beholding. No wonder he was so strangled from it, in such near proximity to  _ her _ . How she had managed to enter a world was beyond his grasp. Someone had to have completed a ritual already. Jonah struck through his entire list. It was useless to even try when this world was claimed. He would need a new course of action.

At least it explained why I.M.O.G.E.N.- no,  _ Stella Firma _ \- did not permit herself access to certain things. The beast had to be fed, and it could not manipulate every step of the process, that would be cheating, a hollow victory. The entities had avatars to feed them, and she had Stella Firma Limited. Her people.

Whatever Stella Firma was, David-7... he was born of it. Everyone here was, but she had paid special attention to designing him. And then she sent him out. She wanted more than just this world.  _ Getting greedy now, aren’t you? _

Jonah’s pacing slowed as he formulated a new plan. “I.M.O.G.E.N.?” He felt the behemoth turn its attention to him a moment before her voice answered.

“Yes, Jonah?” 

“I would like to go outside, and perhaps see this Cosmic Lounge my coworker is so fond of.” The guns had twirled out of the walls before he had finished speaking, but in comparison to the whole of her, he knew they were a minor reaction, something akin to goosebumps. “I can tell you how David-7 is progressing, if I’m allowed certain freedoms. That is why you selected an avatar of the Beholding for your trade, is it not?”

The guns bobbled again. She was surprised, and not used to being surprised. She had thought him incapable, that she had misjudged her choice. The guns retracted. She was pleased to have been right after all. “Tell me.”

“First, open the door.” A light flashed from red to green by the door and it clicked open obediently. “And get me something besides this slurry to eat.”


	16. Chapter 16

“...Again.” 

Daisy’s glare was compulsion enough. Martin sighed and opened his mouth to start over.

“Oh, come on, I think we all have better things to do than listen to the same thing over and over,” Melanie complained. She leaned over the back of the breakroom couch, idly twirling a butterfly knife. 

“People remember different details on different retellings.” Daisy's words were enunciated in a practiced tone that barely kept the underlying snarl restrained. “Again, Martin.”

“I was with Jon. We were talking and we left the restaurant and you were chasing Jared- you still haven’t said what happened-”

“We’ll get to it.” Her so far even voice was becoming more tightly wound with every word. Martin swallowed and continued on.

“David-7 ran into us and we all teleported, and Jon got from the Eye that we were on something called a biosphere and David-7 knew about it because it was in his universe and he made a monster that got sent there and we pretended to be asleep so the monster wouldn’t kill us? Because it doesn’t like people being awake. And then we were back here and I don’t know why. And I have proof!” He snatched a small bundle of the needle-seeds out of David-7’s hair and handed them to her. She looked down at them, thoroughly unimpressed.

“Martin, these are pine needles.” 

“No, no, they’re- look!” He took them back and stabbed them into the pot that had once held an orchid, before they’d all had some issues coordinating who was supposed to water it. The seeds did nothing. Daisy pinched the bridge of her nose. Tim poured the remainder of his coffee on it.

Basira pulled the pot out of his grip and set it down on the table behind her. “Look, Martin, we believe you. We just need to find out if you have any leads on why the teleporting happened.”

“Oh.” Martin rocked back on his heels. “Well.” He had a few theories that he suspected she already had as well. After all, they had travelled to David-7’s universe immediately after David-7 crashed into them. That really didn’t leave a lot in question about why they teleported. What he didn’t understand was how they had come back. But saying that would mean blaming David-7, and he had been more afraid and confused than either of them. Whatever was happening, he wasn’t doing it on purpose. “I... I don’t know.”

Daisy seemed to understand. She kicked open a cabinet under the sink and pulled out a dusty pair of mittens. “Here.” She threw them at David-7, who made no attempt to catch them. He stared down at the mittens on the floor before apparently realizing the similarity they had to his hands and bending down to pull them on. 

She sighed. “We’re going to need to work on your reflexes at some point. For now, let’s just keep you from touching anyone and see if that solves our... issue. Do they fit?”

He waved delightedly at her with one wool covered hand. “Yeah! Yeah, they look good, what are these things?”

“Mit-tens.” Daisy pronounced it slowly and carefully, and David-7 nodded very seriously at her. “Do not take them off. They’re to prevent you from touching us. You’re going to need shoes, too

“No socks!” David-7 pouted. Martin was sent reeling again from the whiplash of hearing such a childish thing out of Elias’s mouth. Melanie snapped the knife shut and made a hasty escape from the conversation before any more footwear was brought into play.

“No socks,” Daisy agreed, pulling out a pair of tennis shoes from the cabinet. David-7 struggled putting them on with the mittens, but eventually managed it. He itched at the mittens, and Daisy scowled at him but he pretended not to notice.

Basira grabbed his hands when the mittens became in danger of falling. “What’s wrong? Are they too hot?”

“Um, yes? I think this is what hot is, I’ve never actually felt it? Stella Firma is always really cold.”

Daisy groaned. “Okay, well, maybe Jon will find something in Elias’s office about a different way to keep you from teleporting us around. Until then, um...”   


“Oh my god, just take him ice skating,” Tim said, exasperated. He slumped against the wall and put his hand over his head like he had a headache.

Basira nodded. “That’s a good idea, thank you. Daisy, will you drive us?”

She twirled her car keys around one finger. “Sure.”

“Martin, do you want to come?” 

Martin blinked. “Um, no? Wait, Daisy, you were going to tell us about Jared-”

She waved the question away with a slight growl. “It’s not important, I just saw him and chased him and he got away. Happy?”

“Oh. Um, yes, okay.” He stepped aside as Daisy bundled David-7 towards the door. “Well, bye, then.”

Basira waved as she followed after them. “Bye! If you want anything, text us. I think I’ll take them to the mall afterwards. We do have Elias’s credit card, you know.” She winked.

Martin flopped on the couch and put his hand in his hands. His heart rate was almost back to normal after mistaking the seeds for worms. He brushed another out of his hair. They were mostly off his clothes, but this was the third time he’d found another in his hair after he thought they were out. It was worse than sand.

“You didn’t want to go?” Tim’s voice startled him. He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t alone.

Martin shook his head. “Uh, no?”

“It sounded like fun.”

“I- I should...”

“Go check on Jon?” Tim finished irately. “Yeah, I think there’s some darjeel tea left after this morning.”

“What is your problem, Tim?” Martin immediately felt like shrinking into invisibility, but the words were said. 

“What is my problem?” Tim echoed hollowly. “Really?”

Martin was displeased to learn he had not spontaneously developed the ability to not be beheld. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, you did.” He pushed off the wall and crossed the breakroom in a few tense strides. “So, let’s have it then. You want to know what my problem is? I have a lot of them. My problem with these...  _ things _ , the entities or whatever is that they killed my brother, and they killed Sasha, and we  _ didn’t even know _ . Do you remember what she looked like, Martin? Do you know what her real voice sounds like when she isn’t scared? Or  _ anything _ about her?”

Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes. “This isn’t fair, I miss her too!”

“No. No, Martin, you don’t. I know you don’t. Because I miss her the way you would miss Jon.” 

Oh. Oh, of course. It was obvious, wasn’t it? How had he not seen something like that? “...I’m sorry.”

Tim was apparently not done. “You don’t get to be sorry. You’re part of this, you know. Jon’s turning into another monster, just exactly like all the ones that hurt us and trapped us here, and you’re letting him.” He seemed to tower over Martin. He looked down, and Tim bent over to talk directly in his ear. “I will tell you this once. I am going to kill them all. I do not care if they look like someone I used to know.”

When Martin finally looked back up, Tim was gone. He got up slowly and went to pull the tea out of the cupboard. They were out of all but darjeel, just like Tim said. “He’s still Jon,” Martin muttered defensively to no one. 


	17. Chapter 17

The station was rather small, in total, not much bigger than the Magnus Institute, if one discounted the engine room. With so few people, Jonah wondered how she managed to treat them all as disposable, until he saw the creation room birth eight new humanoids in the span of an hour. It made perfect sense then.   
One of them looked identical to the form he was currently in. It walked away to the same room he had previously been locked in, and a half hour later, another humanoid who looked just like the being he had known as Triexel followed.   
“So, humans too?” The security room was empty, per his request and in exchange for as detailed a description of David-7’s current status as he could provide. For the low price of watching a moron wreck havoc on all his carefully laid plans, it was now just him and all the cameras aboard the station. Despite the circumstances, he was grateful for the advantage, as his connection to the Eye was already failing again.   
“Yes! The distinction between clone and human is entirely superficial! All knowledge and ‘memory’ can be programmed directly into adult forms!”  
Jonah put a hand on his arm and pulled away more goo. “So, what about this?”   
“The goo is a vital part of the charade of differentiation! Would you like the goo to stop?”  
“Yes, please.” A syringe burst from the wall and lodged itself into his hindquarters. Jonah tried very hard not to jump. He could feel the behemoth laughing slightly at him. Well. Good. She wasn’t too focused on her mission to abandon a sense of humor apparently, and wasn’t above directly following someone so small. That was something.  
“Goo cessation serum administered! Side effects may include-” She began speaking too fast for his ears to follow. “Stella Firma is not liable for any side effects!”  
He scowled at one of the cameras she was watching him through. His own face scowled back at him from one of the screens. The displeasure looked ridiculous on this squishy faced form, like a child throwing a temper tantrum. He would have to look into changing it. He was already missing the chiseled jawline that he’d selected Elias Bouchard for. “You’re hilarious.”   
The holodesk in front of him buzzed, and a series of images appeared. “Are you ready to begin?”  
Jonah examined the pictures in front of him. They were satellite images of an obviously artificial planet. He flicked through them and saw that he’d been given images of three different planets, all showing cities and landmarks in their own planet’s distinctive style. “Begin what?”  
“Productivity efficiency recommendations!” She said it in an unusually chirpy tone, and Jonah gathered that Knowing what she meant was part of his testing phase. She still wasn’t completely sold on him being what the Eye had convinced her he was.   
Productivity efficiency... of what? These planets looked finished, and if Stella Firma had been a planet building company, they would have been out of their hands. But she wanted something from them still.   
There was an information file attached to each planet. Jonah flicked through them, focusing on the provided statistics. They were all commissioned by an entire alien species, or at least a representative speaking on their behalf, on a pro bono deal, which was strange indeed because so far he’d only seen planets made for very wealthy groups and individuals. The planet Jo’xca was at 12.8% efficiency, and it was the commissioning species’s second planet, following an incident with a red giant collapse that had completely destroyed their first. There had been relatively few planetbound disasters on Jo’xca since their moving in. Nearly 100% of their species was located on Jo’xca.   
Lavondala was the commissioning species’s eighth planet from Stella Firma and was at 3.9% efficiency, with 14% of their total population on the planet. Jonah couldn’t find much information about the previous seven planets, but the fact that relatively few of the species was willing to move onto Lavondala said plenty.   
Jarondes had an efficiency rating of 1.6%, and was the commissioning species’s first planet. Their home planet had been destroyed in a religious war, and the new one was located many thousands of lightyears away from the home planet of their conquerors. 100% of the surviving members of the species were planetbound.   
“What are your recommendations?” The voice was pleasant, but Jonah sensed a timer. Efficiency... The highest efficiency rate was on Jo’xca, who had just had a Stella Firma planet destroyed before moving their entire population to a new one. The lowest was Jarondes, who were fleeing a war they had no hope of winning, to a promised land of safety and security. And, Stella Firma herself enforced an arbitrary hierarchy of who was the most and least likely to die, for no apparent reason other than to instill fear in the lower rungs of her artificial society. An idea began to reveal itself, based on a handful of statements Peter had been bothering him about, but he’d not paid much attention to at the time. They might have been still shoved in his desk drawer from when he’d promised during the last divorce to look into it.   
“My recommendations are... to introduce a slow acting bioweapon to Lavondala, and encourage travel between its other colonies. Alert the Eprixa people of Jarondes’s location, and begin deploying the latent volcanic activity on Jo’xca.”  
A glass tube next to him opened, and a piece of paper fell out. Jonah nodded, and scrawled them out before shoving the paper back in the tube.   
“Pleasure working with you. Can I call you Extinction, or are we not on a first name basis yet?”  
“Sass detected! Security alerted!”   
A red light did in fact blink on, but Jonah was the only ‘security’ there to observe it. “Well, that’s alright. I’m in the mood for meat today, any endangered animals you could make a burger out of for me?”  
“Watch it, mister!”


	18. Chapter 18

The return of the ice skaters was loudly announced by Daisy swearing up and down at David-7 in the hall outside the archives. Martin put his book down and started brewing the chamomile he’d bought while they were out. 

Basira poked her head into the break room and waved at Martin. “Can you find the others? I think we need to have another talk about all this.”

“It happened again?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I’m gonna go return the skates and get our car, you can ask Daisy and David-7 about it.”

And just like that, she was gone, and he was left to play the role of mediator again. He texted Tim and Melanie first, he’d have to go and get Jon, he never checked his phone while reading statements, and then cautiously looked outside.

Daisy’s face was pinned back in a snarl, and Martin was quite sure if she were anything other than human that her ears would be flat against her skull. David-7 had his back to the wall, and it was the first time Martin could ever remember seeing Elias scared. He held his hands up in supplication, but Daisy was so close that they were almost brushing her shoulders. They were both soaked to the bone, but only David-7 was shivering. He was not wearing the gloves.

“...I’m sorry! I-I’m not  _ trying _ to do it-” 

“That doesn’t fucking make it better!” Daisy’s teeth almost seemed to elongate as she brought them closer to his face. 

Martin reached forward and pulled at her elbow. She half-turned to him, irritated, but didn’t take her eyes off David-7. “Come on,” he sighed. “I’m making some chamomile now, your favorite. Come tell me what happened now.”

With one last growl, Daisy allowed Martin to pull her away. He didn’t try to sit her down on the couch, she’d nearly bitten him last time, so he just let go and went back to watching the tea. She paced behind him like a panther. David-7 slunk inside. Martin didn’t watch where he went, but he did keep an ear out for any further altercation.

Melanie was the first to arrive. Martin considered leaving to get Jon, but decided he’d better not when Melanie flopped on the couch and broke out her knife sharpening set, completely ignoring the tea he set out for her.

“So, what fear is teleportation do you think?” She asked it casually, but Daisy’s breathing quickened and it couldn’t have been anything but a deliberate jab. Martin pushed David-7 to the other end of the couch and sat between them, with mild annoyance from both at the disturbance. 

He watched his phone screen anxiously. Sure, he and Tim had had a fight, but he wouldn’t just leave him to deal with this. Surely. On some level they were still a team in all this. Right?

David-7 huffed. “What are these fears you guys keep talking about? Are emotions some kind of alien superpowered species in this world? Do- do you even know how ridiculous you sound?”

Daisy stopped pacing and Melanie stopped sharpening her knife. “Oh my god, we forgot to tell him.” Melanie didn’t sound very apologetic, more surprised.

“Every other avatar already knew, why should we have assumed this weirdo didn’t?” Daisy’s brow was pinched, though from confusion of distrust Martin wasn’t completely sure. 

Someone came into the break room and Martin’s head snapped up, his stomach twisting into both relief and anxiety at the thought of seeing Tim, except it was Jon who entered, a tape recorder in one hand and a few sheets of paper in the other. Neither feeling subsided in the least.

He looked very excited about something, and almost started to speak, until he saw Daisy and David-7, soaked to the bone and shoeless. “Oh, what happened-” His eyes went wide and his jaw snapped shut as the tape recorder he held clicked itself on, but the compulsion was spoken and there was no taking the words back now. Daisy’s fingers left marks in the card table where she gripped it too tight, but she spoke. 

“We thought that covering his hands might keep him from teleporting us. The gloves we found for him were too hot, so Basira and I took him ice skating. It was going well, even if we had some trouble getting him into the skates without the employees bitching at us about needing to wear socks. 

“He was really wobbly, so we mostly left him to his own devices by the rink’s wall and practiced our figure skating routine. This worked for about half an hour before something spooked him- from what I got out of him, Helen showed up. Not sure why. Anyways, he bolted away from the wall and crashed into us. We all went down, hard, and got a few bruises, but miraculously nothing was broken- because he pushed us, not onto the ice, but into a snow drift.”

She tore her glare away from Jon to instead glare at David-7 for a moment. “As I’m sure you know, ice rinks do not  _ have _ snow drifts. We were somewhere else, and there was a polar bear standing over us. It was on hind legs, in a business suit, and it spoke in perfect English. It yelled at us for being humans, and we sort of tried to apologize for that, but it wasn’t listening. I was almost sure I had a concussion and was unconscious, except-” Her voice shook. Martin wanted to plug his ears and pretend he couldn’t hear. Daisy was resisting as much as the compulsion would allow.

“-Except I knew I wasn’t dreaming. First of all, it wasn’t the right dream, and I couldn’t hear the blood as well as I usually do. I wanted to fight the bear off, but I just- it wasn’t  _ there _ the way it should have been, so I- I didn’t.” The resistance in her voice dropped and she plowed forward, energized now that the part she’d wanted to conceal was spoken. “David-7 said something I wasn’t really listening to about Stella Firma, and that pissed the bear right the fuck off. So we ran, or rather skated, there was a whole lot of ice under the snow and we still had the skates on. Basira and I had to drag David-7 along, and we got away from the bear alright, but then he fell down a hill and drug me with him and we fell into a stream, it had to be sub-zero and just not frozen because it was running too fast. And then we were back in the Institute. I don’t know how we got here. Basira left to get our car.” She heaved a sigh as the grip of compulsion released her. 

Jon didn’t seem to know what to do. He started to reach towards her but evidently thought better of it. “Daisy, I’m so-”

“Forget it.” She shouldered past him. “I’m going to go change into something dry.” The tape recorder clicked itself off and Jon stood perfectly still, like a deer in headlights, as Daisy left. 

He came to life like a newly activated robot, shuddering into motion all at once, and pulled one of the uncomfortable straight backed chairs away from the card table and across from the couch. He waved the papers a bit, but didn’t seem to know how to start. “Do you kn-” He stopped mid sentence and bit his tongue so hard Martin flinched instinctively. “I need to tell Tim something. All of you, actually, but most especially Tim.” His voice was much more timid, and Martin appreciated the effort, even if he didn’t particularly mind being compelled, and besides, Melanie certainly did mind.

“I’ve texted him.” Martin answered the unasked question as though communicating like this was perfectly natural. “...I think he might be mad at me though.”

He could tell from Jon’s face that he wanted to ask why, but couldn’t think of a non-question way to do so. Which was just as well, Martin didn’t feel like finding a nice way to tell him their friend wanted him dead. Especially when it was a problem for another day, after they’d handled the Unknowing. 

“You can tell us now,” Melanie suggested. “And next time we see him, we can let him know.”

Jon lit up. “Right, yes, good idea, Melanie. So, um-” He waved the papers again. “We don’t have to stop the Unknowing! The rituals don’t work.” 

Martin had to check that he hadn’t put lead in his tea by accident. He hadn’t, which didn’t explain the way his stomach was dropping, or why he felt dizzy, or any number of things, and maybe it was best to just drink the tea and hope it would go away. This was going to go away somehow. 

“No way.” Melanie snatched the papers from his hand and flicked through them, knife forgotten in her lap. David-7 raised his hand.

“Uh, yes?” Jon tilted his head at him.

David-7 put his hand down and blinked. “Yes, sorry, just... What?”

“What?” Jon echoed back. 

“Well, you guys keep saying things like the fears, and avatars, and the blood, and Unknowing, and the rituals, and I don’t know what any of that means.” David-7 blinked again, and then again, almost like he hadn’t realized he could do it on command and was now testing it. “I mean, those are mostly words I understand, but you are not using them in contexts that make any sense to me.”

Jon rocked the chair back on its back two legs. “Right. Okay, well, let’s see. The fears are powerful beings created from the fear of people, and they sometimes manifest and cause problems- those problems create more fear for them to feed on. Avatars are people who have become part of them. The blood is how Daisy interprets messages from the Hunt, which is one of the fourteen fears. The rituals would theoretically bring one of them into our world, but as I just now learned, that’s a faulty assumption. The Unknowing is the Stranger’s ritual, and the Stranger is another of the fourteen.”

David-7 looked at him skeptically for a moment. “Only fourteen? I can think of a lot more than fourteen fears. Like being blended into slush, or being left in my room because Triexel forgot to come to work, or Hartrow deciding I’m responsible for stuff Triexel did, or Triexel deciding I’m responsible for stuff Triexel did, or I.M.O.G.E.N. deciding to stop feeding me-”

“They- they aren’t quite that specific, those would be part of another fear, like the Flesh, or the Dark, or Lonely maybe, or the Web-”

“What about the fear of making a planet that kills people?” 

“Um. That’s Web, again, I- I think.” Jon didn’t look certain. 

Melanie shuffled the papers and passed them to Martin. “Okay. So, we’re off the hook then. No world saving required. Can’t believe Elias didn’t tell us, that bastard.” She remembered her knife sharpening set now.

Jon shifted uncomfortably. Martin watched him over the tops of the papers, which he skimmed. Gertrude had to have been pretty certain to just... do nothing. It was a fairly conclusive experiment though. “That’s... Yeah. I’ve been trying to think of why. Can’t think of anything that isn’t horrible.”

“Because he’s horrible,” Melanie stated flatly, as if Jon were the dumbest man alive. 

“...Right.” Jon laced his fingers together and let his eyes flit around the room. They came to rest to Martin’s right, on David-7, still shivering and dripping wet. “Well, I think we can call it a day now. I found the keys to Elias’s apartment, there should be clothes that fit you there if you want to change.”

He didn’t seem to understand at first. “Change? Can you wear different clothes here?”

“...Yes. You can. I’ll help you. Martin?”

“Yes.” He didn’t need another word of invitation. Anything to get out of the Institute before the growing anxiety in his stomach ate him alive. 


	19. Chapter 19

“That’s really all there is to tell.” The camera screens didn’t turn back on, so Jonah guessed she was still angry with him. “He was on the ice planet that the polar bears were so angry about, and then he left, unharmed. Two of my employees were with him, just as before.”

This time she deigned to communicate with him through a series of angry beeps. He reclined the chair backwards- it was surprisingly comfortable, and he understood now why security hadn’t wanted to leave to check the alerts. “If you would tell me what specifically you want, I could be off more use.” Not that he particularly cared, but in the brief moments he was able to reconnect with the Eye, it had been very pleased with all he had observed and had gifted him with more information about the happenings at the Institute. Jon was up to something, derailing his plans, but he couldn’t yet tell if the situation was salvageable. He needed more from the Beholding, which meant the Beholding would need more from him. He needed the cameras back on. 

“You are to give updates on the project’s status.” She was definitely angry.

Jonah sighed. “I really don’t understand. All the other powers can follow their avatars themselves. Is there a reas...” He trailed off. “Oh, of course. You can’t do what they can because you aren’t born yet. You’re trapped wherever here is, separate from my world, reality proper, until something occurs to make you relevant. That’s the project?” 

The angry red lights in the room turned green. Jonah sighed. “Right. Well, you’ve sent him off with no instructions for causing an apparent extinction event, and trapped me here. I’m not really sure what to tell you. There’s not a lot of ways for us to help you as things stand.”

"Sass detected! Security alerted!"

Jonah drummed the edge of his currently dark holodesk. "Extinction. Please. I am alone in your only security room."

"Sass detected! Watch it, mister!"

"Would you please just tell me what I'm meant to be doing?"

“Your role is to provide status updates and give productivity efficiency recommendations!” 

“....Right. Because terrorizing the people here makes you more...” He circled his hand in the air. “Just, more? Is that right?” 

Half the screens flickered on. “Right. Okay, then. Current project status is that the subject is now located in reality proper and has established recurrent transport back to base reality?”

The rest of the screens came back to life, as well as the holodesk with three more ‘beneficiary’ planets. The tube next to him spat out a slip of paper and pen. “Understood. I think we can make this work.”


	20. Chapter 20

Melanie was waiting in the Institute's foyer to ambush them all the next morning, in brightly colored spandex with plastic bags of similar clothing at her feet. Daisy sulked behind her, their outfits matched exactly. David-7, dressed in the least casual clothing Elias owned, dress pants and a mostly unbuttoned button up, with expensive name brand loafers and no socks, pouted next to Daisy.

“But I picked out my own clothes! I’m wearing blue today! It’s my favorite color!”

“Um, what’s all this?” Martin vaguely gestured at Melanie's getup.

She huffed and tossed a bag at him. “I’ve figured it out. Go put this on and see if you can drag Jon away from the statements, we are taking a field trip.”

Martin looked through the bag. “Melanie, I’m not wearing this.”

“If I have to, you have to,” Daisy snarled from behind her. “Both of you,” she added. David-7 gulped and ran away towards the bathrooms.

“Right.” Martin nodded terse and headed towards Jon’s office.

He was indeed wrapped up in a statement, reading silently for once, with five more spread out on his desk and Melanie’s gift shoved under it. Martin knocked on the doorframe and he looked up, startled.

“Oh. Hello, Martin.” Jon set the statement down. “I don’t suppose you’ve gotten Melanie to divulge her top secret plan, have you?”

He shrugged, aware he’d been compelled, but not sure if Jon had noticed it. “No. Kind of thought you’d know. Do you?”

He shook his head. “Not the slightest idea.” His eyes went wide and he looked back up at Martin apologetically. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I forget about-”

“Questions? Yeah. It’s okay, I don’t mind.” He couldn’t stop a wry smile from tugging his lips upwards. “I don’t have anything to hide.”  _ Not from you _ . “Nothing you’d think to ask, anyways.”

“Right.” For a moment, Jon’s slight smile mirrored his own, then quickly fell away as his eyes drifted back to the papers littering his desk. “Listen, I don’t know if I should stop, there’s a lot of stuff to go through and we’ve already been surprised too much, and I’m worried Elias will come back and...” 

He didn’t need to finish. Martin had heard plenty from Melanie about what their boss could do if they crossed him. Jon’s fingers tapped out an erratic beat on the oak, next to an empty mug of something that was not tea. Next to three empty mugs, actually. 

Martin picked one up. It had definitely been coffee, and strong. “You did go home and go to sleep after we explained how clothes work to David, didn’t you?”

The guilty look on Jon’s face more than answered for him. Martin set the mug down with a sigh. “Okay. Come on. We’re gonna go do Melanie’s thing, and then you’re going to have a nap, and  _ then _ I will let you come back to work.” 

Jon gestured helplessly at the papers. Martin shook his head. “No. Listen. Our boss is literally not occupying his own body right now. There is no one _to_ care if we’re not at work. It is a most certain fact that you’re not going to crash for at least another hour, you’re a lightweight about coffee normally and this is Basira’s Deathwish brew, so come out with us and just think about something else for a while. If we run into something weird, we’ll all be there to handle it. It’ll be fine. And if Elias comes back, well.” Martin paused to think about this. “I’ll lock him in a cellar until he’s David again.”

A slight laugh escaped Jon. The tapping on the table slowed, then stopped. “All good points. Alright. Fine. Thank you, Martin.” The look on his face could have melted snow from mountain caps, Martin thought, and shook himself out of his stupor before he did something stupid like  _ saying that out loud _ . He tried and failed to quell the butterflies wreaking havoc on his stomach, and was only a little more successful in suppressing the feeling that he’d do anything for Jon to look at him like that forever.

“Yeah. Yeah, no problem.” He abruptly remembered the bag he was holding. “I guess we should go get changed?”

Jon kicked the one by his feet, as if suddenly remembering it too. “Yes, I guess we should do that.”

* * *

Tim and Basira beat them to the Institute’s grand arching entrance. She had swapped her normally loose and colorful hijab for a more sporty black one that seemed like it was better suited for staying in place during lots of motion. Thinking back, Martin was sure it was the one she’d worn when she’d visited the Institute as a police officer. He guessed Melanie had told her beforehand, or maybe that she had even had a hand in planning this venture herself. 

Tim tugged uncomfortably at his tight neon leggings. “Hey, Mels, you know you could have just said to wear workout clothes, right?”

Melanie pushed her fingers together so hard Martin was briefly worried she’d break something. Then she exhaled slowly and some of the tension eased out of her body. “Firstly. I do not approve of the nickname ‘Mels,’ and you are well aware of this. Second. I thought it was important that we all matched. I am sorry I guessed your size wrong, and maybe later you can bother to fill out the google form I sent you weeks ago so I will be able to actually coordinate us for things like this in the future. Honestly, even Elias filled it out, Tim.”

Tim tipped his head backwards, avoiding Melanie’s eyes. “Ugh, fine.” 

David-7 bounded up the stairs to them, nearly tripping on his own feet. He hadn’t taken the tags off the clothes and scratched at them some. “Are we ready to go now?”

Daisy reached over and yanked the tags off without comment. Basira nodded solemnly. “Melanie, would you please explain your theory?”

She rubbed her hands together and Martin tried to not let the glint in her eye scare him. “RIght. So, when David-7 teleports us, it’s been when he’s in an elevated state of panic, think about it, it was when he was seeing Daisy chase someone and being frightened by Helen. When we teleport back, his heart rate has dropped somehow. First he was lying still and acting like he was asleep, and then he fell into freezing water. So, if we can teach him to control his feelings and turn his panic into calm, we shouldn’t get teleported anymore.” She concluded her speech and spread her hands as if waiting for an ovation.

Jon nodded slowly. “I suppose it’s a plausible idea. So, what exactly are we doing?”

She jerked her head towards the door. “There’s a yoga place like a block away that does free trial classes. I reserved spots for us.”

“Yoga? Really?” Tim looked as skeptical as Martin felt, but he was too glad to see Melanie trying to interact with them to care about how ridiculous it was.

“Yes, yoga, Tim. I thought it would be good for all of us. The instructor told me Fridays are for team building classes. I think it would be really grand if we could all stop hating each other for, like, an hour, is that going to be alright with you?”

Tim crossed his arms and Martin did not miss his brief sideways glance at Jon before he sighed and gave in. “Yeah. Sure, why not?”

* * *

Jon balked when they actually arrived at the studio. “Something’s wrong,” he said, peering inside at the energetic and enthusiastic people trying to greet them. 

Melanie elbowed him in the side. “You don’t get to bail on us. Team building, remember?” 

Martin put an arm around his shoulder. “We’re all right here. We handle things together.”  _ No more of you running off alone and getting kidnapped. Be where we are, at least. _ Jon seemed to understand the subtext and let Martin pull him along after the others. 

A woman in an eyeburningly pink leotard cheerily introduced herself as their instructor. Three other groups of people, apparently office workers who were not first time visitors, dully answered her. “Good morning, Ms. Koby.” 

She clapped three times. “Let’s get warmed up with some stretches!” She dropped into a perfect splits so quickly it looked like she was a dropped doll. “You might not be able to get all the way down, just go as far as you can!”

“Is that normal?” David-7 whispered, already trying to copy her. 

“Maybe for someone who does this a lot,” Melanie hissed back, struggling to not look like she was struggling with it. The other groups mirrored Ms. Koby easily. 

Martin was already regretting this. The spandex had been bad enough, though he’d been a bit surprised Melanie had actually managed to find any in his size. Team building or not, this had to be the single worst thing that he’d done at the Magnus Institute. If the others didn’t look like they hated it at least as much as he did, he might have left. The only one apparently having fun was David-7, who was trying his level best to do exactly what the instructor was while they all held back a bit. She was on to side stretches now, which tugged at previously untouched muscles and made Martin flinch. 

“Arms over your head! Really feel the stretch in your neck!” Ms. Koby demonstrated, and Martin could have sworn her neck actually became longer. He didn’t know that was possible, but it must have been something that came with practice because the other groups could all do it, but none of the archive staff could.

“And down! Shake it out!” Ms. Koby wiggled her arms and they looked much floppier than they should have been. Martin was briefly concerned before he remembered the floppy pencil ‘magic’ trick. He still felt ridiculous repeating the motion, and tried to avoid making subconscious associations with jello.

David-7 giggled a bit. Martin tried very hard to take the same mindset. This was fun. This would be fun. Yoga was all about relaxation, and if he spent the whole time tense about doing it, that would defeat the purpose. This was fun. 

The first few yoga poses were not fun, and neither were ones after that. Martin felt absolutely ridiculous and off balance most of the time, but the bright side of that is that it took up so much of his attention he couldn’t pause to think about how the others were doing. Ms. Koby gave a continuous stream of instructions, not all of which Martin could really follow because she didn’t seem to know what a human’s lung capacity actually was and instructed them to inhale and exhale for much longer than should have been possible, and asked for a few poses that he really thought should have dislocated something. It must have been possible though, since only the archive staff was struggling with it. Everyone else breathed in laboriously slow time according to Ms. Koby’s pace.

And then they moved on to the team poses, which was somehow even worse. Ms. Koby arranged each group in a circle and instructed them to put one hand in and lift their other leg off the ground. “Support each other! This is all about balance and trust! Focus on becoming one at the center of your ring.” 

And that was when it all fell apart, literally. Static flared around them and Jon dropped to his stomach, destabilizing the rest of them and sending them crashing to the floor as well. 

Melanie moved as if to stand up and opened her mouth to snipe at him, but before she could get a word in he pinned her hand to the floor with his and mouthed,  _ Flesh _ . Her face turned ashen as she looked around the room.

The archive staff snapped to high alert, except for David-7, who looked around at the other groups and loudly gasped. “What’s wrong with their hands?”

Martin spared a glance upwards. The other three groups were actually fusing in the center, their hands becoming one mass of uninterrupted flesh. The people looked bored, as though this was a routine event for them. They didn’t seem to notice the archive staff warily untangling themselves, but Ms. Koby did. Daisy drug David-7 to his feet and steered him a few steps away from everyone else.

“Run,” she hissed, already shoving David-7 along with her towards the door. 

The door which Ms. Koby was blocking. A few brightly dressed, and longer than should have been possible, yoga staff filed in behind her. “Aww, do you have to go so soon? We can help you book your next session! Make sure to leave us a five star review on Yelp!” 

Daisy froze, and began to back up as the yoga staff advanced, dragging David-7 with her. There was no obvious opening to get around them, and Martin wasn’t sure what their reach would be anyways. He was definitely regretting leaving his knife at the Institute when he changed. 

They drew closer together as the yoga staff began moving to the sides to flank them. “Stay calm,” Daisy whispered. “Do not teleport me. Do the weird slow breathing thing.”

“The weird slow breathing thing the scary shifting lady taught us?” By the pitch of David-7's voice, he was definitely failing to stay calm. Around them, the other groups were gradually becoming more enmeshed. Melanie brandished a knife-  _ where was she keeping that _ \- at the approaching monsters. Ms. Koby’s smile hadn’t dropped a millimeter. In fact, it had grown. Wider and wider still, up past her ears and into her hairline, until Martin was certain she was going to unhinge her jaw completely and swallow them all whole. 

“Oh, you’re doing so well for your first session! That’s it, just huddle in a little closer and really feel the togetherness.” She advanced on them and Daisy drug David-7 a bit further back towards the others. “We should start to see some results very soon!” Next to him, Jon yelped and Martin looked down to see that where he’d put a hand on his shoulder the skin was fusing together. Jon tried to pull his hand away but it was stuck fast. Melanie and Tim were fused at the ankle, and Martin could just see out of the corner of his eye where Melanie had grabbed Basira to stabilize herself and been unable to let go. Well, that did help explain why Daisy hadn’t released David-7 yet.

An idea came to Martin, and he didn’t pause to consider whether it was a good one or not before acting on it. He reached forwards and yanked Daisy and David-7 into them as hard as he could. The yoga studio flashed out of existence as the staff reached unnaturally long arms towards them, and the smell of blood and colors of sunset replaced it.


	21. Chapter 21

Jonah snapped to attention. “Extinction. There’s a problem.” He flicked the holodesk around until it displayed the drone he was looking through. Her pet project had drug his entire archival team through with him, and apparently they’d had a brush with the Flesh. Normally, he’d be ecstatic, but David-7 had picked the wrong planet. It was one he’d helped design, and the last place Jonah currently wanted Jon. He suspected Extinction would agree.

“...something interesting on tonight’s episode of Bloodsports Mania 7081! In the corner of the arena we have some surprise contestants! Or, um, maybe it’s just one contestant? Doug, do you know what species we’re looking at here?”

“No idea, Rodger, it could be a pack of juvenile Paradytilery, or it might be a mutated hairless Qxa? If that’s the case, contestants should watch out for those cnidoblasts! They pack a hell of a punch!"

“That they do, Doug, that they do! How will our contestants approach this new threat?”

The answer appeared to be ‘with sharp and pointy objects.’ “Send them back.”

The Beholding was lightning quick to inform him that she did not appreciate being ordered in that tone. Jonah grit his teeth and amended his statement. “Please. I don’t want my people hurt, and losing David-7 would ruin your plans. You have total control over this place, do the reasonable thing and send them back.”

“David-7 is in control of his actions. His development will not be disrupted.” 

Melanie waved a knife and screamed at an approaching alien. Even as a group, they were much smaller than it. 

Jonah tapped his fingertips together and considered his options. He could not strongarm her into doing anything, he simply didn’t have the leverage, especially while David-7 was here. He had nothing he could directly do alone. He could, maybe, ask the Beholding to pass along a message to Jon. It wouldn’t like being used that way, but if he got it something interesting, it might allow the slight this once. There wasn’t much time, already a green blobby alien was cutting a path across the arena over the former competitors.

“How does it work? The teleportation?”

He almost thought she wouldn’t answer. A single second passed, the green blob was fast and would reach them soon, the hulking giant was slow, but it was already close enough to strike. Another being feebly looked up at them, but it was quickly joining the reams of bodies in lifeless unconsciousness around them. Jonah highlighted it and flicked through its profile. It had led a miserable life, and was dying a miserable death on live television. The Beholding rumbled lowly, barely perceptible, but there nevertheless, an acceptance. 

Her voice almost startled him. “I allow him to return to me if he is afraid. He does not have enough power to do this alone, and must borrow it from others like him.”

That explained it well enough. “So that’s why he keeps bringing my people here. And then they’re rejected, like an organ transplant, when he is no longer afraid.” It was not a question. The blob struck them and someone yelled. It withdrew, damaged somehow. One of them had managed to hit back. Probably Melanie. He'd made a good choice in taking her on.

“Yes.” But they knew that already. It had been Melanie and Basira’s theory, which had led them to the Flesh. There was nothing in it he could use. But, maybe he didn’t have to speak to _them_. 

"He can't control whether he's afraid, you should know this better than anyone." The quick one recovered itself.

"Watch it, mister!." It struck again.

He could feel his message being delivered as the giant brought its weapon slowly upwards, a club of some kind. It might have once been the arm of a huge statue. 

The door didn’t make sense. It had not been there, but once it was, it was as though it had never not been. And then it and they were gone again, and it was as though nothing had ever been there at all. 

Jonah let out a long sigh and rubbed his temples, listening idly to the commentators' confusion. She didn’t care about all of the work he’d put into this, how good of a shot he really had. He could try to convince her, but she likely wouldn’t care until she was herself enough to be included, fifteen, not fourteen. “Project status update: subject has no clear sense of direction, and is largely in the dark about what he is meant to be doing.”

“Please only report on David-7’s status.”

“I _am_ reporting about David-7. I’ve finally figured out what it is you’re going for, no further instructions necessary. Continuing, subject is currently in the realm of the Spiral, and is expected to be returned to reality proper unharmed. You’re welcome.” He hesitated. She wouldn't appreciate it, but she needed him more than she needed her pride. "Next time you aren't capable of something, tell me outright. We are working together in this, after all."

The three ‘positive’ beeps were as much acknowledgment as he could expect. At least she hadn’t decided he’d crossed a line. The real upside to this mess was that he now knew Jon had been marked by the Flesh, with no nudges from him needed at all. The Slaughter wasn’t actually strong enough in her domain for the bloodsports planet to count, but that was alright. It was still one more mark. A successful day, overall.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: blood
> 
> None of these idiots are medical professionals. Very bad medicine ahead.

“Well. The Eye has certainly gotten itself involved in something now, hasn’t it, Archivist?” Helen was as hard to focus on as ever, especially with her nonlinearity blending into the walls of her hallways. She towered over them, constantly shifting in ways that made Martin think of the optical illusions he’d poured over for hours in his much younger years. 

Still, it was good to finally see a friendly face. “Hello, Helen! Thanks, I think?” Martin sagged against one of the walls, dragging Jon and Daisy, still stuck, along with him. 

“Oh, I’m happy to help! Had a brush with the Flesh, I see, hold still!” Her fingers reminded Martin uncannily of scissors, and he struggled not to flinch when she brought them closer to them. The rest of them did not even try. 

Daisy growled low, Melanie slashed her knife weakly towards Helen despite being bound facing away from her, and David-7 gasped out a sob. Basira and Tim stayed silent, either really unafraid of Helen or unwilling to show it. Jon was perfectly still, like a prey animal faced with a wolf, half hidden from her behind him. “No, no- that’s alright, we’re fine-”

“Nonsense, Archivist, just hold still now and let me help.” It hurt, worse than the worms, worse than anything Martin had felt before, but Helen was quick and they were soon separated again. The wounds were luckily shallow, and Martin couldn’t help but think of the others they’d left behind, and what separating them from each other would have taken.

Martin curled and uncurled the hand that had stuck fast to Daisy’s, trying to find an angle that would slow the blood dribbling from his fingertips, and mouthed a quick apology to her as she tried to hastily bandage up the hand that she’d gotten stuck to David-7. He was almost catatonic again, curled against the wall. Melanie had sunk to the floor as soon as she was able, shaking and hunched over the leg that had both stuck to Tim and been stabbed by the thing.

“There’s a first aid kit in the break room,” Basira said, one hand loosely guarding her wrist. It was spoken cautiously, halfway between a suggestion and a request. 

Helen clapped. “Right! Sorry, I don’t have a lot of medical supplies on hand here.” She scooped Melanie up over her protests and tossed her head at an impossible angle towards another door down the hall. “This way!”

Tim ambled along after them, one hand pushing off a wall, with a string of grumbles that were audible from a fair distance. Basira tugged David-7 to his feet gently and paused just long enough to be sure Daisy would follow her.

The wave of dizziness he’d been expecting finally hit. Martin brushed his knuckles gently over the gash in his side, just above his hip. The outlandish colors of the outfits Melanie had chosen hid blood surprisingly well. He’d been lucky, really, it was a small knife, and he didn’t think it hit anything important. Probably. For once he was glad about his weight, if he’d been smaller the cut would have been much worse. Still, moving his leg was hard, and it hurt. 

Something pushed against him and Martin obeyed it without thinking, sinking the rest of the way down to the corridor’s floor. “Martin?” Oh. Jon hadn’t left yet. “Stay here, I’ll be back in just a moment.”

He tried to call out for him not to leave, he’d never find him again, but by the time he managed to open his eyes he was alone. The repeating pattern on the wall seemed to move as if it was made of snakes, and Martin didn’t know whether he was seeing things or if the Spiral’s hallways always did this. He guessed it didn’t matter too much. Just as long as Jon stayed away. Surely Helen wouldn’t take more than one of them? They were friends, he thought so anyways, she shouldn’t need very much of a toll for helping. One should do, and he wouldn’t have to be trapped for very long anyways.

And then something was tugging at him, sharp but not painful. Jon was back, with bandages on the floor by his knees. He was saying something Martin couldn’t quite make out and stitching the knife wound closed. It was longer than he’d first thought. Had Jon always been left handed? He could dimly tell that he was being asked a question, but couldn’t understand it well enough for the compulsion that sparked lightly around him to take effect. That wasn’t good, probably. 

His wrist was squeezed with enough pressure he thought it might break, and warm breath tickled his ear as Jon leaned in closer. He could almost make it out this time, and he could definitely hear the tinge of panic in his voice. Maybe he’d realized his mistake in coming back. Helen’s kindness could only outweigh the Spiral’s needs for so long.

“...Martin, please,  _ wake up! _ ” Adrenaline coursed through him suddenly, compulsion crackling with a vicious presence around them. The hallway itself seemed to recoil, but Jon didn’t notice, staring as intently as he was at Martin. The pressure on his wrist relaxed and Jon sat back, breathing hard. He looked like he wanted to say something, but instead collapsed forward, throwing his arms around him. 

“H-hi, Jon.” Martin let his head fall forwards and bump against Jon’s. His chest felt hot and wet, and it took a moment for Martin to realize why. Even at their worst he’d never seen him cry before. “Jon? Are you okay?” 

He didn’t answer, but nodded, almost frantically. Martin shifted, noticing the bandage on his shoulder for the first time, and the smaller ones on his fingertips. He must not have been paying much attention. He pulled Jon tighter into the hug. “Right. Right. I remember.” 

It took some time for Jon’s breathing to even out, but eventually he pulled away. “We shouldn’t stay here, can you...” He stopped and pursed his lips.

“It's okay. And yes, I can walk.” Martin tried standing, but even pushing off against the wall didn’t help very much and he ended up back on the ground. 

Jon slid a hand under his elbow. “When you’re ready.”

He was able to get up with the help, after a few tries. Jon kept a hold on him and guided him slowly to the exit. He could hear the murmur of the others. Helen had left it open. That was awfully nice of her. He’d have to tell her thanks next time she was around.

He could still hear blood dripping on the linoleum tile and looked down to check where it was coming from. He hadn’t bled through the bandages yet, he was pretty sure. So, then where...

Jon. He hadn’t taken care of his own wounds before coming back. Martin considered scolding him, but whatever new form of compulsion Jon had used on him was rapidly wearing off and he could barely keep his eyes open as Jon led him to the couch. Someone else snapped at him, Tim maybe, so Martin didn’t feel like he had to anymore. Daisy roughly pushed him into a chair and poured maybe a bit more alcohol on his hand than was strictly necessary. Jon flinched, but let her work without protest. It was the same one Jude had shaken, and Martin wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before. His calf was bleeding too, and Martin stared in confusion until he noticed the matching bandage on Tim. Right. That must have been why Tim, Melanie, and Basira had been teleported too, and Martin cursed that he hadn’t thought to check that they would. It was only through luck that he hadn’t left them behind.

Melanie was curled up on the cot, not responding to any of the noise around her. Martin couldn’t tell whether she was awake, but her leg was bandaged and Basira was sitting nearby, talking gently to her. David-7 had several mugs of tea lined up, moving his arm as little as possible and muttering something to himself. They had all made it, somehow, through some string of miracles. Martin relaxed and finally let himself fall into the inviting arms of sleep.


	23. Chapter 23

“You know it's a foolish plan, don’t you?” Jonah could feel her attention shift onto him and he almost didn’t shudder under it this time. The more frequent contact with the Beholding was doing him a world of good. “The rituals are all doomed to fail, there’s not going to be an apocalypse.”

He really should not have been surprised by the wall gun. “Hail the board?”

It retracted. “Sass detected! Security alerted!”

“No, really, I think we should talk about this.”

“The unknowable plans of the board are not for you to judge!”

“Nothing is unknowable to me. You shouldn’t have chosen an avatar of the Beholding if you weren’t prepared for that.” 

“Sass detected!” 

Jonah sighed. “Would you please just let me do my job and help you?”

She was silent for almost too long, but he was getting used to that. The holodesk flicker to show images of Earth. His Earth, just as he’d left it. “Productivity efficiency recommendation requested.”

He smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. See? It’s all so much easier if you just trust me.” And again with the wall guns. Her reflexes were a bit touchy. “...Hail the board.”

But, really, what was he to do about this? Well, he did know of one upcoming ritual, and while it may be destined to fail, there was no reason he couldn’t use it. If he was careful, he might even be able to use it for his original purposes as well. Getting Jon that End mark was going to be a pain and a bit of a gamble no matter how he did it, but who was he to waste such a golden opportunity? 

“We call it a few things. The Unknowing, mostly, but also the Dance or the Masquerade. It’s a... an excellent business opportunity for us. It won’t work as intended, but I think that if we start now, we can push it far enough along that it will cause... Hmmm. An event.”

“An event?” She understood perfectly and was messing with him. Which was rude, but he could ignore it. 

“Yes. Something that doesn’t bring about the end of the world, but very much looks like it will. All we need is one news reporter nearby, and that ought to be enough for you to... how would you describe it? Blossom?”

“I will become myself.”

Jonah nodded. “Right. For now, you’ve got no avatars of your own, no lingering grip on humanity. You’re a part of the fears, important enough to have certain privileges of your own, but you’re not acknowledged. Not yet.” He tapped the edge of the holodesk. “We’re going to need to orchestrate a few things to make this happen. What methods of affecting reality proper do you have?”

Onscreen, a whirlwind kicked up around a patch of accumulated city litter and a small, dog-like creature made of the trash shook itself awake. Jonah nodded approvingly. “And you can bring people here?”

“People with enough connection to make the trip. Avatars, or multiple who are marked.”

“Right. Good.” He pressed his fingertips together and stared at the holodesk thoughtfully as it rotated through scenes around the world. He pointed at one. “Her. Send her to that lava planet, and then replace her...” He waved the images back to the one he wanted. “Here.” 

“Right away!”


	24. Chapter 24

Daisy traced looping images into the cheap breakroom table, half listening to Basira and Helen. Helen had a strange effect on her, and there was only so much mad rambling she could take. Basira was much better at sorting through it all. Melanie was fast asleep, more peaceful than she’d been in weeks, and Daisy would have counted it as a good sign if it wasn’t probably a result of blood loss. 

What really bothered her was that she hadn’t noticed anyone shooting at them. The bullet Basira had pulled out of Melanie’s leg looked manmade, but she supposed aliens could have independently created them. Then again, something ancient and fierce inside her welled up in recognition if she dwelled on it for too long. It made sense, didn’t it? Melanie had been acting like a woman possessed for so long, and only now with Elias gone did she try to resist it. The constant anger and argumentativeness, the fascination with knives that hadn’t been present when Daisy had run a background check on her... it all felt so much like the influence of the Slaughter. She might have said the attack had done them a favor in getting rid of it, if not for the state it left her and Martin in.

He was still sleeping too, and concerningly pale. He’d been the worst hurt, the alien had struck him angrily, after Melanie had wounded it, but she was fairly sure he’d live. Jon had done something to him that wouldn’t let him not. Speaking of, she needed to check on him soon. He’d fallen asleep in a chair for half an hour after coming back with Martin, then got up and went back to work. Always back to work. It must take a lot of time and effort to feed an entire god, she supposed, now that Elias wasn’t around to do it. Yes, she’d have to check on him soon.

Tim had left, claiming he needed a walk. She’d considered tailing him to make sure he stayed out of trouble, but ultimately decided that staying and keeping trouble out of the Institute was more important. Or, rather, keeping an eye on the trouble already here. Helen was being nice enough, and had some interesting things to say. She’d been to the other universe, had a look around, even snatched a few hapless citizens. All the standard monster tourist stuff. And then she’d heard something, felt something, from the Spiral itself directing her. Half out of duty and half of curiosity, she obliged, and found them. She wanted answers too, but being herself, didn’t particularly mind if they were nonsense. Most of her explanation was nonsense too. It had taken Daisy and Basira a lot of time and effort to piece together what they had. 

She was interested in David-7. Of course she was, he was as crazy as the Spiral could ever want, and very obviously not Elias, despite his appearance. He was obsessively brewing and drinking tea, and mumbling nonsense to himself. Helen almost always had an ear turned to it, and Daisy had to look away to stop trying to figure out the math of how many ears were on her head. He was very upset that Helen wouldn’t answer to the name I.M.O.G.E.N.. A case of mistaken identity, and a bad one. He must have been feeling homesick. Basira explained how he’d appeared the day before, and all of the events that had followed. She left out the bit about the rituals being useless, Daisy noticed, and that Jon had taken things from Elias’s office. She really needed to check on Jon.

She made a hasty excuse for herself, finally through with trying to parse through the haze the Spiral’s avatar exerted on her, and made her way to his office. The Institute's own effect wasn’t much better, but at least she was used to it. She’d learned to suppress the urge to glance over her shoulder, and the dark windows of the doors she passed seemed uniquely designed to function as mirrors and scratch that ever-present itch. For all intents and purposes, she worked here, but the Eye wasn’t willing to accept that she and Basira were a package deal, and she was never fully welcome.

Jon’s door was shut, but not locked, and she knocked once before entering. He didn’t look up, and she wasn’t sure whether he didn’t care enough to or if he hadn’t noticed her until her foot connected loudly with the metal trashcan and he jumped. Still, it took a moment for him to pry his eyes away from the paper in front of him. He hadn’t been reading it outloud, and a tape recorder that hadn’t been beside him when she entered began spooling away. 

“Oh, uh, hello, Daisy.” Jon looked up at her, then back down at the paper and pushed it down his desk. “Can I-” He stopped. 

At least he was starting to notice when he did that. Daisy looped her foot around the leg of a chair and drug it closer to his desk. She sat down heavily. “Helen’s still here.”

“Is- Right. Right, of course she is.” Jon leaned back and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. His brow furrowed briefly. “I hope she hasn’t been any trouble.”

Not a question again. He was getting better. He was still a monster, she was still going to kill him, but it was nice that he was trying. “No. She says the Spiral told her to come get us. Or, something to that effect. I think she’s been lonely, hasn’t stopped talking yet. Tim’s gone out, said he’ll be back later. Martin and Melanie are still resting. Both still fine. I don’t think we’ll need to take them to the hospital. David’s still David, can’t make heads or tails of him.” It occurred to her she could do it now. The rituals were pointless, the world wasn’t ending after all. They were alone. The blood demanded it. Daisy blinked, hard. Basira would be disappointed. And, she had to keep reminding herself, the blood was evil too. 

Jon nodded. “Thank you.” He meant something more, but Daisy forced herself to ignore that. She’d been drawing a lot of false positives recently. The best way to fix that was to ignore the instinct clawing at her that said what he really meant to express was gratitude for letting him operate without oversight in the service of something evil. Nope. The time she’d spent on the ice world had noticeably cut her off from her ‘instincts,’ and she wasn’t sure how that could possibly be, unless they weren’t actually hers. So. ‘Instinct’ could kiss her ass. She was going on facts alone today, and hopefully here on out. 

She leaned over his desk. The paper was a letter, to Gertrude, from someone called Dekker. She tapped it. “How’s this going?”

“Bad.” He shook his head slightly. “No, I- There’s a lot. I don’t mean I’m not learning anything, I mean the things Elias specifically hid from us- they’re bad.” He picked up a tape and held it out to her. She took it. There was nothing on the label. “Gertrude’s last conversation with Eric Delano. He figured out how to leave the Institute. Tim should be happy about that.”

“I think everyone who works here will be pretty interested.” She considered pausing the recorder to play it now, but something on Jon’s face held her still. “No? Why not?”

“It’s, er...” Jon waved his hand in the air and shifted uncomfortably. This topic made him very nervous. “You have to...” 

“Blind yourself?”

He was surprised. He shouldn’t have been, she was brilliant. “Yes. Yes, that’s it...”

“That makes sense. The Eye probably doesn’t have a lot of use for someone that can’t behold and all that.” 

“Right.” He stared at her. Static flared before he even opened his mouth to ask. “You knew?”    


“Guessed, ages ago. It just seemed like it was fitting. Didn’t want to tell anyone without being sure. Damn it, Jon!” Being compelled felt like the words were being pulled out of her throat, as if her throat wasn’t her own. A quick growl reestablished that she could move it as she pleased.

“Sorry!” He really did look sorry, and afraid, and he didn’t say anything for a long while after. Daisy set the tape down and looked over the other things on his desk. 

Standard office supplies, pencils, pens, a stapler. A mug of that one brand of extra strong coffee she’d almost gotten Basira to give up. That tape recorder, still recording. More papers that she suppressed the urge to shift through. She could always break in and go through them when he wasn’t here, but then again it might be safer not to. The statements seemed to be having a near physical effect on her coworkers. More unlabelled tapes that Jon probably knew by heart. A bottle of caffeine pills. Pills and coffee?

She sighed. “When was the last time you slept?” 

“A little under a hour ago.” From the way he fidgeted, he knew it wasn’t what she meant. The blood in her ears demanded she chase this lead, push harder, lean where she knew it hurt to get an answer- 

She shook her head. Maybe she would just... ask again. 

“Jon?”

He had to actually think about it. “Three nights ago.” He didn’t sound very sure.

Well, that did help clarify why she’d been having restful sleep. She looked Jon over more carefully. He did a good job hiding it, he was as put together as ever, discounting the fresh bandages. Back in his work clothes and after a shower, he looked almost normal. But nothing he was doing could really keep the exhaustion from showing in his eyes. Just one more guess then. This time, she was pretty sure the instinct was hers. “The nightmares?”

He nodded, too tired to pretend to be surprised she already knew. “Yes. There’s something...  _ wrong _ with them.” He definitely meant more, but not even the blood could find a malicious twist to his words. He wasn't trying to inflict them on her, or the others. She was pretty sure there were others. He’d said as much, agreeing with her use of the plural word.

“Yeah.” She thudded her foot rhythmically against the floor. He wasn’t reading statements out loud. He wasn’t sleeping. He was trying to stop feeding it, or at least stop feeding it  _ other people _ . Really trying. As much as Melanie had been, taking them all out to learn how to be calm, even if it hadn’t turned out right. As much as Helen was trying, patiently explaining and reexplaining herself to her and Basira until they understood. They were all just... doing their best, caught up in something much, much bigger than they were. She needed to try with them.  _ Don’t listen to the blood. _

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. It didn’t help like Ms. Koby said it would. Maybe she could try something else later. It would have to be enough for now. “Set an alarm for every hour.”

“I- I don’t follow...”

She waved a hand to cut him off. No more accidental questions. “When you go to sleep. People dream in the REM stages, which start around ninety minutes into a sleep cycle. If you’re waking up every hour, you never sleep long enough to get to the nightmares, even if you sleep a full night. It isn’t completely sustainable over a long period of time, but it’s better than overdosing on caffeine.” 

He blinked at her slowly, and for a moment she thought he might fall asleep again right there. “Oh. Thank you, Daisy.”

“Yeah, don’t mention it.” She tapped the tape resting on the table between them. “Do you want to tell them about this, or should I?”

He was slow to answer, this time not just because he was tired, she was sure. “I feel like I have to. It’s my responsibility, my fault they’re stuck here.”

She nodded. “Alright. I’ll leave it, then, it can wait another day. Go home and rest first.”


	25. Chapter 25

Jude Perry had been having a perfectly pleasant day. 

So far, she’d burnt down a retirement home, lit a professional looking woman’s hair on fire, and scorched every drop of coffee in her local Starbucks, all before her lunch break. It was a simple lunch of Hawaiian pizza, and the cheese bubbled when she held it, in a way that reminded her of skin, quickly heated. Her favorite.

And then she blinked. She’d heard the expression ‘in the blink of an eye’ many times before, but never in her life had she experienced something so fast that it could be used literally. She was no longer lounging on her couch, but rather on a blackened rock, which was quickly reheating and submerging into the lava that flowed below it. All around her was a scene of total and complete glowing devastation, and the air she breathed was thick with heat and poison. It was the most beautiful place she’d ever been, and for a moment her heart panged that Agnes couldn’t see it with her. 

Just as quickly she was gone. In the absence of the incredible warmth she was struck with the chill of the afternoon, shielded from the sun somewhere very dim, and she shivered violently. The slice of pizza she had been holding crumbled to ash in her hand. There was a person in front of her, and she reached forward to catch their attention, to ask where she was and if they had seen that beautiful vision too. Her hand passed through them as though they were liquid and they melted wherever her now very curious fingers touched. A puddle of wax that had never lived lay at her feet. She looked around, noticing the crowd surrounding her, some in display cases and others on short platforms. All wax. 

Well, that wasn’t helpful. She needed a phone to call the remainder of the Church of the Lightless Flame, to tell them what she had seen. Her own phone had been plugged in next to her when she had vanished. She crushed a reflexive quell of excitement in her heart that maybe the vision meant that the time was right for another ritual. She still hadn’t mentally uncoupled  _ her  _ from the Desolation yet. The Desolation would rise, yes, and she could be joyous about that, but it did not mean Agnes now. 

She pushed her way past the figures, melting them as she went for the crime of not being useful to her immediate needs. She couldn’t see a way out of here, but the thin streams of light had to be coming from some window or another. As she casually shoved her hand into the chest of a clown labeled ‘Grimaldi,’ a plastic hand reached up to wrap around her wrist. It cracked and blackened and bent, but it did not burn. “And just what are you doing here? Have you been sent to disrupt the Dance, little kindling?” 

Jude could have pulled away easily enough. Instead, she found herself captivated by the being towering over her. A blank-faced mannequin, dressed as a circus ringmaster, and with the voice of an angel. She let herself examine the other avatar for a moment. One of the Stranger’s, no doubt, broken in places but apparently not harmed or hindered by that. And the Dance... well, of course they’d have their own ritual. The name was unfamiliar, but they all had so many names, didn’t they?

“No...” She realized with a start that it was true. She wasn’t. Stopping the rituals was something Gertrude had made her life goal. She would have no part in continuing  _ her  _ work. And, after her vision... “I think I’m meant to help you.”

The mannequin had no face, but Jude could almost swear she was smiling. “Oh?” She released her grip and tilted her head curiously. “Do go on.” There was creepy music playing somewhere, and Jude found herself a little dizzy. She tried to focus.

“I... I think the Desolation sent me here. To help you with the Dance.” With what felt very much like a promise of success for the Desolation alone, but no need to tell the other avatar that bit. “It said that we would accomplish much more together, the Lightless Flame and I Do Not Know You.”

The mannequin straightened and stepped down from the display with an artful flourish. She was still quite a bit taller than Jude. “I see. I am Nikola Orsinov, ringmaster of the Circus of the Other. And you are?” She held out a hand for Jude to shake. 

That was unusual, but Nikola had shown herself to be rather heat resistant, Jude supposed. She shook her hand. It was smooth and cold beneath her touch, but quickly bubbled and warped. “Jude Perry. Member of the Church of the Lightless Flame.”

Nikola bowed her head. “I am sorry for the troubles your people have faced. Ms. Robinson has laid low many of our number.” 

Jude tossed her head and pulled her hand back. This was not a topic she wanted to linger on. “Heard you lot got back at them, though.” 

Her laughter was strange to Jude’s ears, like the vocal chords were being pulled wrong. “We did, we did! The children of the Eye didn’t suspect a thing! But, just one archival assistant was not as much as I would have liked, and of course the Spiral stole away the current Archivist, and just when he was almost ready, too.” She brightened. “Maybe  _ you _ could help us find skins for our Dance!”

Her mind flashed unbidden to the man she’d met in the coffee shop. Jon was slight, nervous, and completely helpless. He didn’t belong anywhere outside of piles of paperwork, certainly not in Nikola’s wardrobe. He had been desperate, grasping at straws for anything to keep himself and his assistants safe. Nothing at all like Gertrude, except. Except. Except he had inherited her title, and served her god. And that was plenty to make Jude hate him. 

Still, she was glad he wasn’t dead. Elias would have had to find another Archivist, and that one might have been much more like Gertrude. No, better to continue to put up with the annoying and naive one than a new one who might actually do something. She reached out to a wax figure and let her hand rest on it. The quick drip of wax onto the floor spoke volumes for her. “I’m afraid your skins wouldn’t be in prime condition if I were in too close contact with them.” 

Nikola seemed disappointed, which was quite a feat without a face. “Ah. Well.” She sat back on her heel. “I suppose you could help us play our calliope. It’s steam powered! Can you make steam?”

Jude shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” It wouldn’t matter what role she played, as long as she was close enough to set it all aflame. 


	26. Chapter 26

The day was a little overcast, and on the cooler side. There was a time when he would have called the weather perfect, but now he longed for heat and flame and ash, and the gentle breeze on his skin felt almost mocking. Tim skipped another rock across the lake. It made it two hops before sinking below the surface.

It had been a busy day for barely being past lunchtime. His sandwich sat beside him on the park bench, half eaten and forgotten. Tim reached down and carefully pulled another stone out of the dirt.

Melanie had told him the rituals were useless. Of course, that meant Jon and the others wouldn’t be doing anything to try to stop the Unknowing. Even though the Stranger monsters weren’t vulnerable any other time. Even though they deserved to be destroyed. Even though he desperately needed to destroy them. This one skipped three times before sinking. Tim closed his eyes and tried very hard not to feel like he was underwater too.

He’d tried to resign again. Even with Elias gone, it hadn’t worked. So, with no world to save, his new role in life was shaping up to be shuffling paperwork for an eldritch fear god until one of the other ones got lucky. That had almost been today, if not for David-7’s weird jumpy magic, and almost even with it. The alien’s gigantic club still felt like it was looming over him. He shivered and stood up abruptly. 

He was practically alone. A goose wandered over curiously and snatched away what was left of his sandwich. He let it go without a chase. A woman walked past pushing a pram and Tim felt a brief stab of jealousy. He couldn’t imagine a calm domestic life for himself with Sasha gone. 

Had they really all forgotten so quickly what the Stranger had taken? Not just Danny, of course they wouldn’t care about someone they’d never met, but Sasha, who he’d spent long nights talking about all the places they’d travel to on vacation and what kind of house they’d buy when they had the money. Sasha who was too forgiving and too understanding and smarter than all of them put together. Sasha, they should have all cared about. 

It still ate at him that Melanie could remember her and he couldn’t. Everything he knew about the woman he really genuinely loved was fake, or pieced together from secondhand sources. The tapes with her voice were the only ones he could never imagine wreathed in flame. 

He knew where the explosives were. He knew enough from Daisy to be able to operate them. He didn’t need the others’ help. He would find the Unknowing on his own and destroy the monsters himself. He wouldn’t even tell them, so they couldn’t try to talk him out of it. He’d plan and wait and carry it all out himself. 

The trip back to the Institute was short, his mind overflowing with plans of destruction. The motions of walking gently tugged at the two shallow wounds on his legs, but instead of slowing him down, the pain was a nice distraction from the roiling mess of heartache and devastation he had been obsessing over for long enough. He set the burgers he’d picked up on the breakroom table, jostling the current game of tape recorder jenga. The tower collapsed and Daisy and Basira glared at him until they noticed the food. 

“Thanks,” Basira said, already reaching for a pack of fries. Helen looked hopefully over her shoulder.

“Can I have some too?” Her hair didn’t look possible, weightless in some places and a solid cartoonish mass in others. Tim tore his eyes away and gestured that she could take what she pleased. 

She probably didn’t need the food, he’d never seen Elias eat, and had noticed a drop in appetite in Jon as he grew more physically dependent on the statements. Maybe it made her feel included. He tried not to calculate how her mouth worked, but he was reasonably sure she was doing something wrong. Then again, when he looked at her head-on, nothing in particular seemed too out of place.

David-7 looked curiously at the fast food, and Tim had to stop him from biting into a wrapped burger. It was lucky he picked things up quickly, explaining how packaging worked for every new food would be exhausting. At least he seemed more receptive to the concept of chewing today. 

Melanie and Martin were still sleeping. Someone had gotten the blankets out of the closet for them. He sat at the foot of the cot and looked Melanie over. She was sweating and shivering a bit now, and her skin was concerningly cold when he pulled the blanket back up over her shoulders. “Are you sure we don’t need to get them blood transfusions?” 

“If they needed that, they would have needed it more an hour ago,” Basira answered, not looking up at him from remaking the tower. “They’ll be fine, we actually would have taken them home by now, if-” Daisy swiftly kicked her on the shins and Basira fell quiet. 

“If?” Tim prompted.

Daisy shot him a glare before turning her attention back to helping Basira with the tower. They’d already sorted the recorders by size, so stacking them was going quickly. “If Helen hadn’t brought up that the knife might have been poisonous.”

“Which is very unlikely,” Basira amended, “because from what David-7 told up about bloodsports, poison is a boring way to watch someone die so the producers would have discouraged it.” 

Tim waved his hands through the air, briefly catching their attention. “What- what do you mean bloodsports? And what producer?”

The way Daisy ignored him suggested he had come in on the tail end of an ongoing argument. “However, while it might be an unlikely method of intentionally killing some, we were on an alien planet and have to assume that all matter is hazardous to us, if only for the simple reason that we don’t know what it is.” 

Helen gently pulled a tape recorder from the finished tower from across the room. Her fingers were disconcertingly long and Tim briefly forgot what they were discussing. “Would you like me to go back and find out?” She placed it delicately on the top of the stack and folded her hands over her knees, which gave the oddest impression of her being a mermaid. 

“Yes, please.” Daisy and Basira’s synchronous answer made Tim jump. How they did that, especially while Basira was focused on extracting a tape recorder from the tower, was a mystery.

Helen disappeared a moment later. David-7 poked cautiously at the tower and somehow managed to extract a recorder from the side rather than middle, though it wobbled perilously. “Could you run through ‘bloodsports’ again, I think I missed that conversation.” Tim stepped forwards to inspect the jenga tower. They must have broken the really big recorder they usually used as a base because it wasn’t there now.

The three around the table looked at him like he was an idiot. “It’s bloodsports. Is that not self explanatory?” Daisy shook her head and focused her attention back on the tower. She very slowly and delicately pushed one out, until a button got caught on the recorder next to it and no matter how gently she moved it, it stubbornly refused to unlatch. The tower fell, and Daisy and Basira began mindlessly sorting them to play again. .

“Really, it’s exactly what it sounds like, Tim,” Basira agreed. 

Tim sighed and began helping them set the tower back up. “Okay, fine. So, have we found some kind of meditation app or something that’s gonna keep us from getting teleported now?”

David-7 answered, breaking a silence that Tim hadn’t noticed he’d been keeping until then. “I- I think I’ve got it now. It’s not exactly on command, but I can remember how I felt to come back really hard, and I can just not remember how it felt when I went there, and that should be close enough. I think?"

Time nodded. “Alright then.” He thought about it for a minute, silently helping construct the tower. “Maybe you’d be able to do that better if you had some more calm memories? It doesn’t sound like you had an easy time back there, and it’s been kind of stressful here so far.”

Basira looked pensive. “That’s... that’s a good idea.” She raised an eyebrow at David-7. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I... I don’t think I know enough about here to know if that’s a good idea or not. If Triexel were saying this, I would expect that whatever he had in mind would probably get me killed? But I don’t know enough about you to know what to expect.”

Helen reappeared, sweeping in from her door like a hurricane. She placed a not yet cleaned knife on the table between them, knocking over the finished tower. “It’s not poison!” she chirped merrily. Daisy snarled, clearly startled by her sudden reappearance.

Tim backed away. “Awesome. That’s awesome.” He put a hand on David-7’s back and pushed him towards the door. “I think you’ll like snowcones, let’s start with that.”

His eyes- Elias’s eyes- lit up. “Ooh, what’s snowcones? Is it like a cone of snow that-” he made whirring sounds with his mouth and waved wiggly jazz fingers Tim couldn’t interpret to save his life. “I hadn’t seen any snow before going to the polar bear planet!”

“You’ll like them, just trust me.”

David-7 looked at him sideways for a moment. “You know, I think I would like to give that a try.”


	27. Chapter 27

The wax museum’s security cameras were rather lacking in angles to choose from, but Jude seemed to be wandering the place without restriction after her talk with Nikola. Jonah chose to take that as a measure of success. He could check back in with her the next time David-7 returned and brought a fresh wave of connection to the Beholding.

“Next,” he waved slightly, as if he didn’t already have the Extinction’s rapt attention, “we will need to give them a little time to get to know each other. If we spring everything on Nikola at once, she’ll suspect something and run off our infiltrators.”

“Productivity efficiency recommendation is to do nothing?”

“No, it’s to wait, for now, until she’s more receptive to having a bit more help. If she simply skins the avatars we send her, their allegiances will not affect her ritual.” 

“How shall we force her to be more receptive to our ideas?”

Jonah sighed. “Well, that’s the thing, you can’t force people to think a certain way, you just have to manipulate a situation so that they come up with it themselves. In Nikola’s case...” He watched the mannequin ringmaster stalk through the halls of the wax museum. Her too-fluid movements reminded him of something. 

“That planet Triexel designed, with all the robots, that was decommissioned. Is it possible to temporarily re-commission it?” And, it was better than perfect, for not only would it reaffirm to Nikola that she was doing the right thing, the maddening spirograph mazes would suggest to her that she should ally with the Spiral as well. He couldn’t send her Helen, she was much too friendly with his own people for it to go unnoticed. But, Helen wasn’t the only avatar of the Spiral.

“Right away!”

He nodded. “Good. We can send Nikola there. That ought to speed up her acceptance of our plans.” He scrolled through camera feed after camera feed until he landed on an ATM camera outside of a nondescript art studio. “Return her here.”

“This will ensure success?”

“Success is a process, Extinction. Be patient.”

* * *

The Unending Rebeginning did not like being ordered about. But, it had asked for its help, and it chose to deliver that help in the form of directions. It had wavered on choosing an avatar of the Beholding for the trade, but it did need a rather big picture approach, and the Mother of Puppets was the only other of its kind able to provide it. No, far better to deal with the blind vision of the Beholding than the thorough understanding and manipulations of the alternative. Try as it may, the Beholding avatar could never match the machinations of the Mother. It was safe in following its directions. They might serve its end, but they would serve its own as well, well enough.

It was growing tired. So much work, and so little fear. It would need to shift that balance soon, or else it would need to borrow. It could take as it pleased from the Beholding, engorged like a tick on the hidden wonders of its domain. The others, it might have to approach more subtly.

The Unending Rebeginning allowed itself a moment of respite before continuing with the work, not sleep, for it did not sleep, but rest. In its rest it saw a beautiful world, unfabricated and all its own, where empires rose and fell and conquered and were conquered and replaced. A world of naught but massive and all-encompassing change, constant and irrepressible. It rose, and did as the avatar directed.


	28. Chapter 28

David-7 was absolutely mesmerized by the lemon-lime snowcone. To be fair, Tim hadn’t noticed much that hadn’t mesmerized him, but it was still funny to watch a grown man- supposedly his boss- lick a snowcone with the enthusiasm of a four year old. “So, better than your first experience with ice?”

He nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes! And it- it tastes weird. Like, it tastes like it hurts, but it's still really good?”

“Um, yeah, that’s a pretty fair description of lemon.” Tim bit into his own blue raspberry snowcone. “Just wait until you try something spicy,” he said around a mouthful of ice. The river they walked along was perfectly smooth, not a hint of a breeze now, and Tim was tempted to try skipping a rock across it.

It wasn’t fair. The dude was like three weeks old and had been forcibly given the mind and body of an adult. Of course he was clumsy, he hadn’t had the time to figure out how to best move his own limbs, and on top of that now he had been forcibly given someone else’s to work with. Tim watched him try to keep the snowcone from dripping onto the sidewalk, the cold syrup spilling over his fingers. 

And now he was in a whole different world, one he hadn’t been born with knowledge of how to handle. All told, Tim thought he was adapting pretty well. He must have just been used to being tossed into wildly unfamiliar situations already, and if the morning’s escapades didn’t have him running from them, he must have been pretty used to being around people who made him afraid. The Institute wasn’t a step up for most people, but David had rolled with its insanity like he was on vacation. 

Tim stopped walking as they approached the gates. He elbowed David-7 to get his attention and pointed above them. “It’s called the London Eye. Wanna go?”

David-7 looked up at the ferris wheel, his eyes growing wide as dinner platters. “Go? Like, get on it? Is that safe?” 

Tim smirked. “Oh, come on, I thought you trusted me?”

He watched David’s eyes flicker between him and the London Eye before finally settling back down on him. “Okay.” He sounded terrified. Tim was briefly floored by how willingly he would agree to something that clearly scared him just because he was asked to. Maybe he’d underestimated how much this guy needed a friend.

“Come on. I’ve got you. I promise.” Tim threw away the mostly melted snowcones- they’d melted weirdly fast for such a cold day- and bought them both tickets. He held out a hand for David-7 to hold onto. He grabbed onto his arm instead.

“Aren’t you scared I’ll teleport you?” He’d buried his nose in his shoulder now.

“I trust you to get us back if you do.” Tim rubbed the back of his hand in a way he hoped was soothing. “Relax. It’s the best view in the city. I’ve been on this a bunch of times before.”

He had to keep reminding himself that the man beside him wasn’t actually Elias to keep from jumping out of his skin, which was easier if he wasn’t looking at him. He scanned the crowd waiting for their turn to go up. A few families, with little kids and bored teenagers. A few couples, fawning over each other and readying cameras. Lots of tourists. One very old man in a jaunty looking bowling hat, leaning hard against a cane. He was people watching too, and his eyes settled on them in a way Tim didn’t like. 

He tapped his fingers against David-7’s hand. “Hey, um. You  _ can _ teleport us on demand though, right? Like, if something scares you?”

That was the wrong thing to say. David-7’s grip nearly cut off his blood flow. “Is something going to scare me?”

“No. Nope. Definitely not. I promised, didn’t I? I’ve got you.” Tim tried very hard not to notice how much closer the old man was. He’d read and heard a lot of statements about old men, but the ones he could remember at the moment were all dead statement givers. Unless he was Trevor Herbet? He very much did not look like a hunt avatar. He looked frail, like a stiff wind might pick him up and blow him away.

As they were herded onto the pod, Tim started talking about his favorite parts of London. It was hard, at first, because the only places that sprung to mind were the ones he hated and feared. But soon he found that he could remember more than just the Institute and the theater and various places they’d gotten statements from. He told David about the old cobblestone street they shut down for an art festival every year and all the best parks to go to if you wanted some peace and quiet. The old man was the last to board. 

David clung to him tighter as they were lifted off the ground. Tim patted his hand and whispered reassurances that he found himself doubting. He switched instead to pointing out the city’s landmarks. That was much easier, and he couldn’t look for the old man while he was doing it. Even so, Tim felt his presence just behind them and viciously cursed his connection to the Eye for telling him.

A third of the way through the rotation, Tim was finally starting to relax. He’d been wrong, nothing was weird about the guy. Just a regular, non-paranormal, creep who was _ still watching them _ . He could see him in the window’s reflection now. Out of the twenty other people in the pod, he hadn’t moved on from staring at them. 

In the middle of promising a history lesson about the Tower of London when they got down, Tim felt breath on the back of his neck, and from the way David’s fingers clawed into his skin. He’d felt it too.

“Lovely view, isn’t it?” 

And just like that, Tim remembered who this had to be. Simon Fairchild, known Vast avatar and one of the main sponsors of the Magnus Institute. And they were stuck on the London Eye with him.

“Used to be the tallest observation point in the city,” he continued. “Not anymore, but I’m still rather fond of it myself.” Simon stepped beside them to look out at the city. They weren’t quite to the peak of the rotation yet, but it was approaching fast and Tim had a pretty clear idea of what Simon would do when it got there. He pushed David behind him, away from the window and away from Simon. He really hadn’t meant to drag the poor guy into even more fear god bullshit, but it seemed pretty determined to follow them. 

“Oh, come now, Timothy,” Simon chided, not turning to look at him now that he had London in his sight. “I thought we were on better terms than that.”

Right, if he was funding the Institute Elias would have told him about everyone in the archives. The Vast and Eye had an alliance of sorts. He needed to say something, keep him talking until they were back on solid ground. His mind flashed to the story of the skydiver and he shivered as he realized even that might not save them. “I- I would like to think we are.” Tim cringed internally and hoped Simon didn’t throw him out of the pod just for how stupid he sounded. The pod must have been catching the sun very well, it was weirdly hot for how high up they were and beads of sweat formed on his skin. 

Simon looked pointedly around Tim. “Not going to greet an old friend, Elias?”

_ Fuck!  _ He didn’t know about David. They couldn’t tell him, he thought he was having a chance meeting with someone he knew well, not terrorizing two total strangers. Tim squeezed David’s hand and prayed to anyone or anything listening that he would understand.

And miraculously, he did. “Right, yes, hello?” Okay, not quite as smooth as Elias, but at least Simon wouldn’t think he was being snubbed. Tim shook David’s hands off his arm and slid it around his waist. He could move David more easily this way if they needed to- or if they even could- get away, and maybe Simon would be less inclined to toss him outside if he thought he was there with his friend. Simon’s eyes flickered to their reflection in the window. 

“Does Peter know you’re chasing your employees now, Elias?” He sounded so casual, but Tim could hear several layers of challenge in his voice. Something had shifted in the air, literally. It was lighter, just a bit harder to breathe. David shifted beside him and he could feel him breathing harder than before. 

His head spun. Elias had a boyfriend, Peter, who did they know that was a Peter, and now Simon, who knew both of them, thought that Elias was cheating on him? And of course Elias would know all this, and he was going to think something was wrong if they couldn’t answer right, and even if they did he might still tell Peter, and who the fuck was Peter?

David echoed his thoughts. “Who’s Peter?”

Tim bit back a groan. That was exactly what they needed to not do. 

Lukas, the other major sponsor of the Institute. It had to be. Peter Lukas was dating Elias. Oh, this was getting worse by the second. He needed to do something, immediately. But, luckily, a Lukas being involved was just what he needed to make this work out without any fear avatars murdering them. 

Peter Lukas was an avatar of the Lonely, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to actually be in a serious relationship with Elias, unless the goal was to break up with him. If it was a long term thing, they had to have periods of separation, because none of the Lukas family could handle anything different. Yes. That was impeccable logic. But Tim had no other ideas and he was fairly sure that something was either badly wrong with the air or with him. Sparks seemed to fly in the corners of his vision. With as much bravado as he could manage, he met Simon’s eyes through the window and tugged David closer. “Yeah, that’s right, who’s Peter Lukas anyways. It’s not his business. They’re on a break.”

Simon chuckled. They were descending now, still a long way from the ground, but past the top of the rotation where Tim had expected Simon to strike. “Ah, I see. It’s funny, Elias, I hadn’t heard you’re going for the younger ones now.” He looked Tim up and down approvingly and he had to bite his lip to cover the swell of angry flame that burst to life inside him. “Although, I can’t say I blame you. So, Timothy, will you be attending our book club this month?” 

Book club? Simon had to be fucking with him. They didn’t have a book club. Unless they did, after all, there was no shortage of evil books in artifact storage. Lietner book club, that was a terrifying thought. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there. Book club sounds awesome.” He flashed Simon a smile that had more than once gotten him access to supposedly secure police information. “Can’t wait.” 

Simon chuckled. “So enthusiastic! I hope you speak Latin, or Elias will have to translate a lot of this one.”

Latin? Tim didn’t know Latin, and David definitely didn’t, but his old private school did have a Latin motto. “Video, audio, disco!” And finger guns. Tim bit his tongue. That was not going to work, they were in so much trouble-

But no, Simon was laughing. He thought it was funny. Hopefully. Tim laughed along with him. The wind outside was still louder than it should have been, but it didn’t get any worse. That had to be something.

They rode the rest of the way down in tense silence that Tim hoped Simon thought was companionable. He thanked his lucky stars that David had picked up enough of a sense of danger to not contradict or question him. Simon tipped his hat at them as he got out of the pod. “I’ll be seeing you!” 

As soon as they couldn’t see Simon anymore David buried his face in Tim’s chest. “I thought you said nothing bad was going to happen!” His voice was high and hysterical, and Tim couldn’t believe he hadn’t teleported them away. 

He rubbed David’s back in gentle circles until his crying slowed. “Hey, no, I didn’t say that. I can’t ever promise nothing bad’s gonna happen, not when we’re us, every bad guy in London’s got your number. I said I’ve got you. And I do.”

“Oh.” David fell silent, just clinging to Tim as if he couldn’t stand on his own now. “Can we go home now?”

“Sure. Sure.” Tim ruffled his hair. “Elias’s apartment isn’t too far-“

“No, no, the- the Institute?”

Oh.  _ That _ was what David considered home? Tim swallowed the burning fury he felt at the thought of the Magnus Institute. It wasn’t helpful right now. “Yeah. Of course, we can do that.”


	29. Chapter 29

The kindling woman might be a problem. Nikola followed her, at a far enough distance that she could vanish from sight if she turned about. The acolytes of the flame had been helpful before, but ultimately they had been serving the purposes of their own god. She wondered how the Lightless Flame was to benefit from the ritual of I-Do-Not-Know-You. If the kindling was truthful, then something far above their tiny earthbound heads had been agreed upon. If she wasn’t-

But Nikola had no more time to muse, as she was abruptly no longer in the wax museum. Hedges stretched to her left and right, hemming her in, in a seemingly endless line. She spun about, looking for something to explain how she had gotten there, but saw only the hedges and the soft grass below her. 

She crouched low and jumped to the top of the hedge. Even with her supernatural skill, it was a difficult jump. Even in the most magnificent gardens she’d never seen hedges this high. She took a moment to stable herself atop the plant as it swayed and buckled beneath her, but the lightness of her physical form allowed her to perch without falling into it. She looked up to examine her surroundings from this new vantage point, and felt as if she had been given breath just so it could be snatched from her non-existent lips. 

A labyrinth spread itself in every direction, as far as she could perceive. Loops within loops and corridors that became loops and loops that ended miles before they appeared to end. Rivers passed underneath arches of hedge, in patterns just as nonsensical as the rest of the environment. Robotic beings roved through the labyrinth, trimming the hedges and rowing themselves along the rivers. She cautiously waved to one of them as it passed below her, but it did not look up.

What an incredible place. Nikola pondered it silently. It was almost as if it was a prophecy meant for her to make sense of, but she did not know what sense to make of it. Just as quickly as she had been brought here, she was whisked away.

She was on a busy London street, and a car honked at her as it blew past. She stepped onto the sidewalk, dodging through human pedestrians that didn’t seem to notice her. It really was amazing what people didn’t notice if they weren’t looking for it. A sticker on a window caught her attention. It was a spirograph, not quite the same as the hedge, but close enough that she couldn’t help but be interested. She pushed open the door to the shop it advertised, the bell just loud enough to be heard over the crowd outside. 

Sculptures rose up around her in a dizzying mess of an art studio. She delicately stooped to examine one. It was of a person, she was sure, but it bore next to no resemblance to one, with sharp corners and lines where she had learned soft edges and curves belonged. They all were done in this abstract style, and as she looked around they seemed to intermingle with one another though they remained still. Something eldritch hung in the air, and when the squat man emerged from the back room, she tilted her hat to acknowledge the other avatar.

“Can I help you with something? Here to buy some art?” His eyes twinkled, and she knew that he at least had the good sense to recognize her as well. She also got the feeling that she would be receiving art whether she accepted or declined. Avatars could be persistent that way.

She twirled about the room, examining other sculptures up close. A small spider ran across one, hiding itself away in a spot she hadn't realized until then was not solid. Each sculpture was an optical illusion and no two were anything alike. “They’re beautiful,” she remarked. “Would you make some more for me? Some that dance?” An idea occurred to her, fueled by Jude’s appearance and her own prophecy. She would have something from each. That was what they were trying to tell her, surely! 

She had been gifted the Lightless Flame representative, and here she could obtain dancers from It-Is-Not-What-It-Is. That left eleven avatars or manifestations to convince to dance. She glowed with joy at her brilliance of interpreting the prophecy. I-Do-Not-Know-You had chosen her well!

The artist considered her. “Yeah, I could whip something up for you. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with moving parts though, so I’ll need some time. How many do you want, and by when?”

Nikola stood to her full height. “I only require one, but it must be the most magnificent creation you’ve ever made. I will wait as long as need be for this.”

The avatar nodded. “Most magnificent, huh? That’s a tough ask.” He gestured around him. “I’ve done some pretty great stuff.” A grin split his face as he eyed Nikola. “Though, you’re certainly quite an inspiration, and I appreciate a good challenge. Have your boys come pick it up in a month.”

“Breekon and Hope are only sometimes operatives of I-Do-Not-Know-You,” Nikola corrected. She picked up a business card from beside the door. “It is a pleasure doing business with you, Gabriel.”

“Likewise, madam. I’ll get started on that right away.” He waved and disappeared into the back. 

Ah, here was someone keen to serve and create, with nothing to organize or orchestrate beyond his next performance. Nikola was briefly wistful, but rapidly snapped back to herself. She had much to do to prepare. 


	30. Chapter 30

The walk back with Tim was nice. David-7 still wasn’t very used to walking, but he was enjoying it. The sun was now hidden behind things Tim had informed him were called clouds, and the light was just right now. Not the harsh fluorescents of Triexel’s office, but far from dark. Just great for seeing. 

He missed I.M.O.G.E.N., but he was really starting to appreciate being in London. Being threatened by people he barely knew was commonplace, but being defended? By people who actually seemed to care what happened to him, no less? That was new and exciting and he could really get used to it. And Tim was so warm. David-7 decided he liked being warm. 

Tim was clever and funny, and real in a way he wasn’t used to people being. Everyone except Triexel and Hartrow had always been abstract, even Bathin, but Tim was real and here and kind. Some part of David-7 insisted that this was a dream, because who had ever been kind to a clone? But it was real, he kept insisting. These people were real and they didn’t want him to die and he was still taking some time to process that. 

He almost wanted to pass by the Institute and just keep walking with Tim, but the other man was slower now and David-7 thought he remembered something about his leg being hurt in the chaos of earlier. He was pretty sure Tim wouldn’t ask him to do something painful just because he wanted to, so he shouldn’t do that either. 

Helen was still there, chatting on in her strangely familiar voice to Melanie, who was limping around the break room making food. He still wasn’t very sure about food. It was weird, and not nearly as easy to get or consume as slurry. But, it probably wasn’t made of clones so that at least was a good thing. 

Melanie smiled softly at them when she noticed them arrive. He was still getting used to those too. He sort of associated smiles with Hartrow delivering a particularly scathing line or ordering someone to open their mouth, but her smiles looked different from these smiles. Maybe they were doing something different with their faces, around their eyes? Hartrow’s eyes never changed from cold contemplation. 

Whatever she had made smelled good. It looked like lumps covered in slimy yellow goop though, so he wasn’t too sure. She was moving slowly too, and sat by Helen at the flimsy looking table. “Hi, guys,” she said. “Daisy and Basira went home for the night, I'm planning to head out sometime before dark. Helen was just telling me about Sannikov land. Great sunsets, apparently.”

Helen was confusing, and David-7 found he liked her best when he wasn’t looking at her and only kind of thinking about her, so he let Tim pull him into a seat and watched Martin while she talked. He was moving more than he had been when they left, and his breathing was more consistent. He was pretty sure that was a good thing, but medicine wasn’t something he’d looked into a lot with his I.M.O.G.E.N. access. 

“Oh, yes, the sunsets are amazing! Nothing like them anywhere else! I love to sit on the beach and watch them with the sharks. The colors are a symphony, and they’re different every day. Mozart wishes he could make something as beautiful as the sunsets.” Helen’s fingers moved a piece on a checkered board, which was a part of a game, and not a mystical higher being or set of higher beings to be served, he’d gathered. He wondered whether his board had been checkered. “Checkmate!”

“Helen, we’re playing checkers,” Melanie said with a slight laugh, moving a piece of her own. Apparently checkmate was not something that was said in checkers, even though the words were close. David-7 decided not to press the issue. There were plenty of other things he didn’t understand. But, they had been pretty open to explaining things so far, so maybe he should try asking about one or two. Something that was obviously odd that most people probably wouldn’t know, he was getting self-conscious about not knowing the easy things. A long word he hadn’t recognized, that would be the thing to start with! Lots of people had trouble with longer words, didn’t they?

“What’s a symphony?” He carefully examined the board and waited for Helen’s next move. He hadn’t quite figured out how to play checkers yet, but he felt like he was making progress just by watching. Helen’s weirdly long, but maybe they were just uncommonly long here, he shouldn’t judge, fingers picked up one of her pieces and jumped it over one of Melanie’s. 

“It’s a type of music,” Melanie answered, staring intently at the board herself. She had one less piece than before! Perhaps the point of checkers was to sneakily steal all of the pieces, so you had them all and the other person had none? Had Melanie noticed Helen stealing her piece? Could she have stopped her if she had? 

“Not very good music,” Tim added. “They're really long and are _way_ too light on the percussion. We can get you better stuff to listen to than classical.”

Well, that only sort of answered the question. “...What’s music?” David-7 kept watching Melanie’s hands, but she didn’t reach forward to move a piece and after a while David-7 looked up to find all three of them staring at him with expressions he wasn’t familiar with. “...Did I say something wrong?”

Their faces changed again to another that he couldn’t place as they talked over each other trying to assure him that, no, he hadn’t. Helen’s voice broke over the other two. “That’s just really sad!” 

“It’s okay though, we can fix it.” Tim always sounded so confident. David-7 trusted him to fix whatever was wrong with him.

Melanie was looking at her mini holodesk- no, her phone, they called them phones. “Let’s see, do we want to start him off with classic rock, punk, or metal?”

“I was thinking pop, actually.” Tim waved his hands in the air as if blocking a punch. “Now, listen, I know mainstream isn’t cool anymore, but hits are hits for a reason, they bop!” He had thought he’d known what all of those words meant, but they did not make any sort of sense whatsoever in the order Tim had used them, and David-7 was growing more than a bit concerned about whether this ‘music’ was going to try and hit him on the nose. 

“That’s a point!” Helen crowed. “Personally, I’m fond of shanties. They have a beat and tell a story and sometimes when you’re in a big group singing them someone gets off track and sings a different part and other people join them and then you’ve got two groups singing the shanty in different places at the same time!” She clapped and seemed very happy with herself.

Melanie and Tim exchanged a brief, and indecipherable, glance. “Ya know, pop’s good,” Melanie said quickly and looked back down at her phone. A moment later, sound began to stream from it. A person was talking, but very smoothly and in a lot of different tones and there was sound that wasn’t voices too, and that reminded him of I.M.O.G.E.N., but these sounds felt like they were happy and not like they were watching him. 

His face must have said something because they were smiling again. “So, you like it?” Truthfully, he didn’t like the music half as much as he liked how Tim was looking at him. But, it was a nice sound.

“Yes, it’s... it’s really pretty.” Something was wrong with his voice. It wasn’t working right, even though he was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything to damage it.

He recognized ‘alarm’ just fine. Melanie turned the music off. “No, no don’t cry!” Helen pushed a box with soft paper into his hands. He stared at it. 

“We can stop here if it’s too much for you...” He hadn’t seen Tim look uncertain before, and he didn’t like being why. He shook his head. His face was leaking fluid.

“I’m sorry! I- I don’t know what’s happening, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to!” Helen wrapped her arms around him, and he wasn’t sure why they kept doing that, but it felt nice, so he let her. 

“Hey, there, there. There, there. Here, there, all over, everywhere!” Helen patted his back and then released him. This was probably something everyone here knew about that he didn’t understand yet. 

Melanie pulled one of the soft papers out and held it up to his face. It made the paper wet, but his cheek was dry now, and that’s probably what they were for? His cheek was wet again. “Okay, if you hate Katy Perry that much, you can just tell us.” Her voice was mad, but not as sharp as he expected someone mad to be? Like... play-mad? 

Could people even be play-mad? Was that a thing? Maybe she was actually mad and he just couldn’t tell. “No, I- I don’t hate it, I don’t know...” Talking hurt, what was wrong with him? “You guys are really nice, and...” And what? Even if he’d had something to say he wasn’t sure he’d have been capable of saying it. 

Helen was hugging him again, and Tim was ruffling his hair. He was pretty sure the hand patting his shoulder belonged to Melanie. “...This is nice...” 

Whatever Helen was doing, it reminded him of the faint rumble of the engine room he could sometimes hear through the vents. Maybe she was laughing? It sounded different from Basira’s laughter after Daisy had said something funny though. “We’re here for you, sweetie. You are never gonna have to go back there again, promise.” Helen’s voice was still so familiar, and something about it made him believe her.


	31. Chapter 31

Nikola had been delivered to the Spiral avatar without a hitch, and Jonah wished he had a nice bottle of scotch to properly congratulate himself with. His plan was falling perfectly into place, and in no time he would be credited with the birth of Extinction. However, that did bring up an interesting problem. 

He was already an avatar of the Beholding. To benefit from his new ally’s success, he would need to become an avatar of the Extinction. To the best of his knowledge, no one had even been an avatar of more than one fear. Well, there was a first time for everything, and it was theoretically possible, since the fears were more connected than they appeared to be, but he would have to have to rewrite Jon’s incantation once he got back.

What would an avatar of the Beholding and Extinction look like? Subtle eye accessories and decorations that he could secretly look through, of course, he’d been doing that for centuries. Adding Extinction symbology wouldn’t be too hard, just some radiation symbols here and there. He could certainly do something with that uranium glass glow. Stained glass windows in the Institute, perhaps? Uranium glass was a lovely green color, just perfect for the iris of a gigantic eye. He could put it over the big entrance, that would be delightful.

He liked the idea of using volcanoes, though that would be harder to integrate aesthetically. Smog tended to obscure vision. But, they were often named interesting things. He could label things around the office with that stupid labelmaker Peter had bought to annoy him. He’d been planning to immensely overuse it to annoy him back anyways, and what better way to do so than by declaring that his stapler was called Mundua and his pen holder was called Terceria?

Jonah flicked through random images of Earth happily. He was going to have so much interior decorating to do when he got back, and he supposed as a freshly minted avatar of the Extinction he should probably encourage far flung conspiracy theories that the world was ending, at least up to the point until he makes them a reality. Maybe he could get pollution to be trendy again, like it had been when he was a child. A wave of nostalgia briefly distracted him from the holodesk. Goodness, it must have been getting late. Jonah suppressed a yawn. 

“Productivity efficiency recommendations requested.”

Oh, that was starting to get on his nerves. 

He leaned back in his chair and scowled at the ceiling. “My recommendation is to be patient. We’ve integrated a few of the fears into the upcoming ritual, this will make it more visibly successful than normal even though it will ultimately fail, and while it appears to be working, humanity will fear its end and replacement by the Stranger, and you will be born. Now, we have to wait for Niokla to do the Unknowing.”

“Your recommendation is to do nothing?”

Oh, Extinction. Smarter than the others, but still just a baby. “ _ Waiting _ is not  _ nothing _ . It is very important to wait sometimes. If we try to rush Nikola any more than we already have, we will make her suspicious. Just trust that she will do what we want her to, and keep an eye on her so we know she’s still on track.”

I.M.O.G.E.N.’s unhappy signals played in the security room.

“I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing for it.”

“Personnel advancement training recommendations requested.”

_ What?  _ Oh, her chosen avatar, of course. That one was going to be a disappointment to her, too. “There’s really nothing for it until after you’re 'born.' Unfinished fears don’t have avatars.”

“Your recommendation is to do nothing?”

Gods above, they could talk in circles all night. “My recommendation is to  _ wait _ . Everything is as it ought to be. But, if you want to discuss how to forcibly make your David-7 an avatar when the time comes, I do have some thoughts.”

The screens around him switched off. Okay, she was impatient and he was pushing her limits with the theatrics, he could take a hint. “Offer him a chance to implode this reality. Obviously don’t follow through, but make him feel like he has the power to do it. He hates this world, and most of the people in it. He’ll chose to end it so he can stay in reality proper, and this choice will make him yours. It’ll even be alright if he knows the truth, that this universe belongs to you. He’ll still want to collapse it, and that action will still be an act of loyalty to you, despite being directed against you. I hope that's clear enough?”

The screens switched back on and a cot like the one he'd had in the room she'd been testing him in popped out of the wall. “Recommendations noted!” 

She gave better feedback than the Beholding, at least. Rest it was, then.


	32. Chapter 32

Daisy had been right. Jon felt better than he had in ages, still tired but not exhausted to the core anymore. He hadn’t had a single nightmare, which he hoped meant no one else had either. He leaned back in Elias’s leather swivel chair and looked over the large ornate desk, trying very hard to see what here was most important to the enigmatic head of the Institute. 

The box under the desk had been easy to find, obviously just removed from wherever Gertrude had hidden it. The folder of nonsense about an emerging fifteenth power had been shoved in the lower left drawer. Elias had obviously not given the Extinction much thought but had pulled its statements out of his path- he probably thought it would affect his ‘development.’ The pen in its gilded case was a sentimental symbol of status- the engraved message of affection was from Peter Lucas. Jon wondered why he hadn’t noticed the pen before. Elias must have been holding it most of the time he was here, the engraving would have been covered by his hand. 

The upper left was full of evidence against perfectly normal, uninvolved humans, clearly how Elias had been keeping the Eye fed. Important, but not what was important to Elias. The lower right drawer kept the Institute’s financial records. It was a bit alarming how much they relied on the other powers- and how much Elias spent on cameras- but there was nothing there important to Jon. The upper right drawer was locked, and Jon was tempted to go downstairs and ask for Melanie’s lockpicking set, but not tempted enough to face her yet. 

He would tell them, all of them, what he’d learned, but there was more learning he could do first. No point going down there until he had finished searching the office with eyes that weren’t held open by caffeine and willpower. Elias kept a filing cabinet behind his desk, and Jon managed to jimmy it open with a credit card. It was as if the security hadn’t been updated since the 1950s. The cabinet held employee records, contracts of employment and resumes and termination papers of everyone who had ever worked at the Institute. It was neat and organized and Jon felt a brief touch of indignation that no one had bothered to keep the archives in such nice shape.

But, it couldn’t have been perfectly organized, because his own papers weren’t there in the neat alphabetized folders. Nor were Elias, Tim, Martin, Melanie, or Basira’s papers where they should have been. Jon glared at the cabinet as if it was personally withholding them. An idea occurred to him and he acted on it without thinking. There, neatly filed under J., was Sasha’s paperwork. 

A degree in library science, ten years experience at the Institute, the perfect choice in every measure, and Elias had not chosen her. Of course, Jon knew why that was now, he hadn’t needed an archivist, he’d needed an Archivist, someone to sort through all the fear and pain and stories and feed it all to something evil, no matter who it hurt to do so, and that was why he was the Archivist and alive, and Sasha was not. Still. It should have been her figuring this all out instead. She’d probably even know what she was looking for. 

There was a termination record for her. Jon didn’t bother trying to make sense of the clenching in his chest, how he felt wasn’t important right now. How had Sasha been fired from the Institute? She’d died. The Eye, helpful for once, or perhaps just trying to rub something in, informed him that most dead employees had death certificates on file instead.

Cause of termination: non-existence.

Right. That explained exactly nothing, thank you and fuck you to both Elias and the Eye. Jon shuffled them back into place to return them, and a small picture fell from where it was pressed between the pages. A polaroid, what Elias had based their identification badges off of. He’d complained about it when he was first hired, surely it was less efficient to take a picture and scan it than it was to start with a digital photo? It made perfect sense now. 

Sasha- the real Sasha this time- had a round face, dark skin and darker hair, and dimples. Her brown eyes were crinkled around the edges. She would have been so happy to have been hired here. Jon brushed away an unexpected pair of tears and finally identified the tightness in his chest. He put the papers back and set the picture on the desk.

That should have been everything. There was nothing else to check- without Melanie's lockpick at least- but Jon didn’t want to go ask for it until he could get his emotions in check. That would involve either dealing with them, or waiting them out. 

Elias’s desk was unusually thick. Jon rapped his knuckles against it and was surprised to find that it was hollow. The Eye was not helpful this time, even when he tried to specifically request information about it. Something was wrong, it was normally fairly forthright with neutral or harmful information, and even some that was beneficial if he  _ really _ wanted it. He sighed and let the static fade away, poking and prodding at the underside of the desk instead. His finger caught on a switch and a secret drawer popped open. 

Five contracts of employment, all of the archival staff’s links to the Institute were there, along with a small silver key. Jon flicked through them, just to be sure he had them all. His, Melanie’s, Martin’s, Tim’s, Basira’s, all there, all something that Elias had tried to keep hidden away. Maybe, just maybe, Eric Delano had not found the only way out of the Magnus Institute. Jon set them next to the picture and took a deep breath.

Freedom was something he hadn’t allowed himself to consider. It had barely crossed his mind listening to Eric’s statement, for even if the others chose to blind themselves and leave, he was far too deep to follow them. He had been for a long time now. Nikola drove that point home very effectively. By the end of the month he’d spent tied up and away from the archives, she could have left him untied and he still wouldn’t have been able to run away. 

Static, long and persistent, cheerfully informed him that he was quite correct, that he was too dependent on the Eye to leave now, and also just how _ lost _ and  _ purposeless _ Melanie was feeling, now that Basria had accidentally taken away her guiding anchor, her connection to the Slaughter that had been fueling her fury. Leaving the Eye would be a slow and miserable and _pointless_ death, the static hummed. Better to stay, and work, and maybe, just maybe, once in a while come across a statement from someone he could still save. The Eye had a lot of opinions about his retirement, apparently. He relented and slid his own contract back into the hidden compartment.

It didn’t have much to say about his assistants though, and that alone said plenty. It was never this restrictive with information, unless it didn’t want him acting on whatever the truth was. This would work, then. It had to work, he needed it to. Jon considered pulling out the lighter in his pocket and setting the contracts alight right then, but hesitated. It was the right thing to do, to let them go, and he wanted to let them go of course, but...

But he didn’t want to be alone. Aside from Georgie, who was still furious with him for getting kidnapped again, they were all he had. Even though they hated him, he would be completely alone if they left. 

It was their choice. He would tell them, and they could choose, and of course they’d want to leave, but there was a chance... No. They’d leave. But he wouldn’t have forced them to, and maybe that would mean something. 

He would come back to that issue. He picked up the key. It looked like the right size for the lock on the last drawer. Sensible of Elias to keep it all in arm’s reach, if not the most secure. It fit, and the lock clicked when he turned it. 

Elias’s contract of employment was on top, along with his termination record. Cause of termination: possession by Head of Institute. Jon blinked at that line for a moment. Elias Bouchard was not the Head of the Magnus Institute. He pulled out the rest of the papers and shuffled through the start and end of the careers of every ‘Head of Institute’ the Magnus Institute had ever claimed to have, except for that of the founder. Jonah Magnus, the founder and Head of the Magnus Institute, both then and now. Jonah Magnus, who was currently occupying the body of a clone from outer space who designs planets. 

A clone from outer space, who designs planets that are almost uniquely capable of mass death and destruction. A clone constantly under threat of violent and painful death, like every other of the thousands of clones whose deaths he’d experienced all at once while his coworkers were enjoying milkshakes, with the eager enthusiasm of the Eye foisting their fear onto him. David-7’s world was one where entire sapient species could be and were expected to be wiped out like disposable playthings, and that lined up very well with a folder full of nonsense he’d been reading through earlier. He sent a prayer to whatever god happened to be in the vicinity that David-7 was not going to be difficult to find.

There was a brown leather notebook left in the drawer, and Jon shoved it and the ‘Head of Institute’ papers into his satchel. He grabbed the contracts of employment and Sasha’s picture and headed down to the archives. 

The folder of statements about the budding new entity was on his desk where he’d left it and he flicked through it briefly. Everything he'd written off as some hellish combination of the other fears presented itself anew, and he couldn't ignore any longer what he had already known, but not accepted, as truth. The static in his ears hissed excitedly that yes, yes, he’d gotten it, finally. Extinction was coming, and one of its manifestations was already here.


	33. Chapter 33

The caves were disgusting and Nikola wanted nothing to do with them, much less to host the sacred Dance within their dripping confines. But, sacrifices had to be made, and the Buried-touched child that she’d wanted for her dancer had a rather overprotective mother with a very heavy purse. 

Nikola wrapped a bit more duct tape around the crack in her head and began directing her workers about. That ledge was just the right spot for the calliope, and there was some nice height variance to her designated dance floors. She could make do with this. It would all work out in the end. 

The first Hunt manifestation she’d managed to track down was a literal wolf. A rather large one, that might have been the actual wolf that parents told fairytales about, but nonetheless, a _wolf_. A drooling, idiotic creature that blindly obeyed its own desires with no thought or planning. Getting it to dance was going to prove difficult, as her workers were already struggling to make it follow basic directions. It much preferred to slip away and stalk her other performers. The kindling woman had spent most of the drive to the caves complaining about it. 

But, it did not have to dance willingly. Once she could get a muzzle and collar on it, it wouldn’t be that hard to tie it to a platform and spin that. She only hoped she wouldn’t have to struggle this much with all of them. 

The web representatives were being quite lovely about the whole thing, which gave her some hope. They had simply showed up and appointed themselves in charge of costuming, and were already busy spinning gorgeous visions of silvery lace. A few scuttled in and around her chipped form and whispered of the wonders they would bring about together. She shivered slightly in the chill, despite not having any skin to feel the chill with. 

Jude did not have the same comfort, and soon the kindling was at her elbow, hugging herself close and complaining. Nikola paid her little mind. She was burning from within, and while it might not have been ideal for her, she was in no danger of freezing. Although...

“I’m not sure I like the shape.” She waved at their surroundings. “Do you think you could widen that section?”

The kindling looked thoughtful as she seized up the area Nikola indicated. “Yeah, no problem, I’ll just have to make a quick supply run. Need anything else while I’m out?”

The question was sarcastic, but Nikola chose to interpret it sincerely. “Why, yes, if you could stop by the People’s Church of the Divine Host and pick up one of the obscured, that would be delightful.” 

“Obscured?” She wrinkled her nose, either in disgust or confusion. Perhaps both. 

“Well, yes, what else should one call an acolyte of the darkness?”

She huffed. “Fine. I can do that.” She tilted her head and looked at Nikola out of the corner of one sharp eye. “What do you call us?”

“You and I are not a couple, my sweet.” It was not what she had meant, and she made that clear in her expression. Ah, to have a face. To express.

“I meant me. Acolytes of the flame.”

“Ah. Kindling.”

She considered the name, and tossed her head noncommittally. “It’s alright. Not totally accurate, but eh. Close, I guess.” She sighed. “Alright. I’ll go get your ‘obscured’ now.”

“And the explosives,” Nikola reminded her. She hadn’t needed to remind her, but it was something to say. That was what people did, she was pretty sure. Say things they didn’t need to, so they could be closer to others. It didn’t seem to work, as the kindling immediately turned and stormed off. Well, as long as she performed her role.

Hmmmm. Storms. She would have to find a way to lure one of the endless as well. They might take some issue with her choice of venue, but they did not have to dance willingly. They only had to dance. 


	34. Chapter 34

It was late, well out of the working day, they might have all left. He needed to check anyway. His first thought was to head for the archives, but on the way there he noticed light under the break room door and the soft thrum of music inside.   
Of course, Martin and Melanie were probably just waking up. Jon pressed against the door, but froze when he heard a laugh that was unmistakably Tim’s. He sighed. Was it really too much to ask to deal with just one thing at a time?  
He pushed the door open and abruptly all the talking and laughing stopped. Melanie turned the music off and pulled her phone into her lap silently. Martin was awake and sitting upright, looking better now after some rest. David-7 was there, good, he wouldn’t have to look for him, and Helen was there? Helen hadn’t left yet, apparently.   
Alright, as long as she wasn’t trying to snatch his assistants away, she could stay, and just as well, since she was apparently able to get to them even in Extinction. That might change if the power was actually born, but for the moment having her on good terms was an advantage he couldn’t risk by dismissing her. Even though her presence bent the light in impossible ways, even though everything about her was a mockery of the woman he’d failed to protect, even though he still wasn’t completely sure she wasn’t going to return to her former self’s quest to kill him. She was powerful, and they needed her, and that was that. Jon drug a chair over to the table and spread the papers out on it. Where to even start?  
He didn’t get the chance to pick. Melanie picked up the employment contacts and shuffled through them. “Are you firing us, Jon?”   
Her voice was less sharp than he was used to hearing from her, more light and teasing than accusatory, but much more tired. “Well, I- I thought I’d at least offer to.” No point in telling any of them about Eric’s solution, not without trying this first. It could work, he was the highest along the Institute’s chain of command with Elias- no, Jonah- out of the way. Jon cut himself off when he realized he was trying to convince himself it was true. It had to be. It was that simple, it had to work, because if it didn’t-   
It had to work.  
Melanie set them back down. “Okay. I’ll think about it.” She tilted her head and scowled slightly. “Are you going to tell us what you actually came down here to tell us?” Ah, there she was. That was much more familiar.  
He opened the folder of Extinction statements. “Gertrude’s partner had a theory about a fifteenth, as yet unemerged power. He called it Extinction, and I think David-7 is a manifestation of it.”  
“I’m what!”   
Jon jumped slightly at David-7’s tone and took a second to remind himself that he was not currently being scolded by his boss. David-7 had been completely in the dark about the powers and would of course be surprised by already being affiliated with them. He should proceed delicately and try not to upset him.  
“Manifestations are beings, or locations or events, that are not naturally occurring and were created by an entity to further its purposes. I’m not exactly sure what an Extinction manifestation in the form of a-”   
“You mean I’m evil?” The hitch in David-7’s voice caught Jon’s attention. His eyes were brimming with tears and his jaw was trembling. Jon cringed. He had apparently not been delicate enough.  
He wasn’t sure how to fix it, but he needed to try. Tim pulled David-7 into a hug and glared at Jon over his shoulder. “No, that wasn’t what I meant- I- You’re still a person, you can choose to do what it wants or not, though not complying is much harder. It just means we have to be careful, because manifestations can be controlled in a way that avatars can not be. The- I think that the teleportation is something of a recall system, Extinction is protecting its investment in sending you here by bringing you back to a more controlled space when you could be in danger.”   
Melanie arched an eyebrow and shifted in her chair. “A deathmatch arena is a more controlled space?”  
“For Extinction, as compared to a Flesh-controlled yoga studio, yes.”  
She nodded slightly and picked up a half open bottle of nail polish- the black glitter one that Tim thought he had cleverly hidden by placing it between the couch cushions- before pulling one of Helen’s long hands into her lap. “So, what are we going to do about it?”  
“Do we really need to do anything?” Martin’s voice was softer than he was used to. Jon’s heart was clenching for some reason. He decided it was more likely a product of eldritch nonsense than a serious medical problem and did his best to ignore it.   
It was a good question. If the Extinction could teleport him without his consent, could it do other things? Jon suppressed a shudder at the thought of allowing another thing like Jane Prentiss to stay in the Institute for so long. And then there was the problem of Jonah Magnus. The Eye wouldn’t allow its avatar to remain stolen, he’d be back eventually. What that meant for David-7 was something they’d have to consider before then.   
Ultimately, if the Extinction meant to screw them over, it would manage to do it whether they kept David-7 around or kicked him out. If Magnus returned, it was better to have him in a place they could keep an eye on him.   
“I’m not sure there’s anything we can do. This isn’t like avatars trying to do rituals, this is something on the level of the powers themselves. Our best- and only- course of action is surviving whatever they decide to do.” And Tim was glaring at him again, what was it he’d said this time? He was mildly surprised Tim wasn’t already yelling at him, though he supposed that was a bit difficult while patting David-7’s shoulders. Regardless, it could wait. “We need to lock these,” Jon waved at the stack of papers, “away, in case Magnus comes back, he’ll hide them somewhere, and we can’t have that if we do decide to quit-”  
“Ooooh, who’s Magnus? Has your Institute got a personification now? That’s so Spiral of you!” Helen sounded very intrigued, but she still hurt to look at, so Jon answered to the bottle of nail polish instead.  
“Sorry, sorry, Jonah Magnus- he’s been possessing everyone chosen to be the Head of the Institute since he ‘died’ and presumably he’s in David-7’s original body now. In the event he comes back somehow, we need to keep everything important away from him- he could probably figure out lock combinations with the help of the Eye, so with us is the safest place for any of our employment contracts we’re not going to burn.”   
God, that hurt to say out loud. Was he really considering burning anything? Something in him viciously protested, but yes. Yes, papers held power within the domain of the Eye, they were a steadfast and uneditable source of information, so of course they did, and burning them was the only sure way to keep Magnus from using them. Anything related to his team needed to be kept away from him or burnt.   
Tim was flicking through the papers now. He stepped away with the polaroid and something was wrong with Jon’s heart again. “Burn mine. I’m done.” David-7 was trying to look over Tim’s shoulder at the picture, and an idea started to form in Jon’s head. It was a stupid, reckless, idea, and there was no way he could possibly go through with it. He couldn’t ask them to do it with him.  
But. The static smugly whispered that Tim was going try something anyways, that he really didn’t care whether or not he lived through it as long as it hurt them. Breathing was suddenly difficult. No. No, he wasn’t going to let that happen, he wasn’t going to lose another person he was responsible for. He spoke before he could stop himself.  
“Tim- I’ll help.” He couldn’t read Tim’s expression, but the static supplied that he was feeling angry. “With the Unknowing. It’s the only time the Stranger will be vulnerable, even if it isn’t to save the world, I- this is important to you. And- I think there’s a way to do it, well, not safely, but-”  
“Jon. Cut to the chase.” Right. Right, he’d been rambling, and while Tim was angry, Tim liked things as direct as possible these days, at least coming from him.  
“Right. David-7.” He seemed surprised to be being addressed. “We’re going to attack the Unknowing. Doing this will mean we’ll be in their territory, and it would be easier to get out if we could-”  
Tim cut him off again. “Wait, wait, no, we’re not dragging him into this-”  
“Do you have another way to get out?” The static hissed that he didn’t, but Jon ignored that, It didn’t matter that it was true, what mattered was whether Tim would admit that.   
His eyes flicked about the room and landed on Helen. “Hey, so you know how you have, like, doors everywhere, and-”  
Helen snorted. “I’m not going to help you blow up the Stranger’s ritual. Besides, I couldn’t get into the Underground anyways, it isn’t friendly to me. It’s like a cactus, but not the delicious ones, like this one! The Institute is a delicious cactus.”  
Melanie dipped her brush back into the nail polish and drug it down one of Helen’s oversized fingernails. “Would you mind trying that again?”  
“No. The Buried is not as close to me as here is. I have trouble with it. Plus, it's so dirty, I’d never be able to convince anyone to buy something so gross.”  
Martin timidly raised his hand. “I thought we were stopping the Stranger’s ritual? Not the Buried’s?”   
Helen nodded. “It’s been moved! Everyone’s been making a big fuss about it.” She made a face. “The other Spiral avatar is making a dancer for them.”  
“Other powers are helping?” Tim crossed his arms and scowled. “Helen, I’m sorry, that sounds-”  
“It’s in that cave!” She bounced out of the room, leaving the humans to look between themselves confusedly.  
“Sorry, can we go back to the Jonah Magnus is still alive thing?” Martin asked. Jon tiredly pushed the termination records of the supposed Heads of Institute to him.   
Melanie recapped the nail polish and sighed. “This is... It’s... Too much. I want out too.” She paused. “I’ll call Basira about it, maybe she isn’t asleep yet.”   
Martin set the paper trail down and sighed. “So, he’s been lying to us. About, basically everything”   
“...Yes.” There really wasn’t much else to say. Jon suddenly remembered the journal he’d shoved in his bag in his rush to go find them. The Beholding hadn’t tried drawing his attention to it at all, if anything, he felt a negative pressure around it. That had to be important, but better not to mention it until he had the chance to read it first.  
Tim frustratedly pushed his employment contract into his hands. “Okay, our boss is a lying fuck, who cares? Come on, you said you would. If you lost that Web lighter, I’ve got another.”   
He was right. He had offered. “I- I’ve got it.” His hands lit up in pain as the tip of the flame touched the corner of the paper and he dropped it on the floor with a hiss. The page continued to curl up and blacken as his nerves screamed in protest.   
Someone was saying his name, but Jon couldn’t manage to care just then. The last untouched scrap of paper caught fire and the pain began to dim as it crumbled to ash on the linoleum. It lingered, like the aftertaste of the drink Daisy had made him try, but he found he was able to ignore it well enough once the last wisp of smoke dissipated. He took in a long breath of air, surprised to find he’d stopped doing so for a while.   
Tim and David-7 were talking over each other, Melanie was saying something that sounded like it might have been a question. Jon let Tim pull him away from the table and deposit him on the couch next to Martin. Martin pulled him into a hug, which was nice. Jon let his head rest on his shoulder and focused on actually listening to what everyone else was saying.   
David-7 wanted to know whether this was normal, Martin wanted to know if he was okay, Melanie wanted to know what had happened. Tim was trying to fend off all their questions at once, and Jon was tempted to simply let him. He shook his head. No. No, he was fine. It had hurt, but it was over, he was fine.   
Apparently he was mumbling this out loud because Martin was contradicting him. “-don’t look fine, Jon, what was that?”   
“I- I don’t think the Eye liked that,” Jon answered. Martin’s hug was very nice and he didn’t want to pull away. He couldn’t stay like that forever, as tempting as it was. He sat up and looked around the room for Tim. “Did- did it work?”  
Tim gaped at him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure it did.” Jon couldn’t pin exactly what was off about his voice, but it was different from what he’d come to expect from Tim.  
“Good.” He reached forwards to pull Melanie’s contract off the stack.   
Martin caught his wrist before he managed to get the lighter up to it. “Hey, you still don’t look okay, rest for a minute first.” That sounded nice.   
Melanie hung up and handed him Basira’s contract. “She wants out too, when you’re ready.” She shuffled back awkwardly. Seeing someone hurt makes her think of the Slaughter, of what she could have had with them. She could have been one of their best, and she knows it. She is grieving the loss. She will grieve this loss too. “I- I’m going home. Goodbye.” She looked like she wanted to say something else, but changed her mind. “Thank you.”   
She isn’t ready to be without a purpose, the static hummed. Don’t let her leave, it will hurt her. You don’t want that. You should tell her no! You should tell her to come back! She needs this.  
Jon stayed quiet as Melanie left, and as the two pages tore fiery gashes through his mind. He tried not to flinch, which was easier now that he was expecting it, but he must have because Martin hugged him anyways. When the fire subsided and Martin finally let him go, Helen was back. She waved a tape in his face, the one about Lost John’s Cavern.   
The Eye was quick to shove a brief version of the story, and the fear, through his mind at the sight of the tape. Not reacting to that was at least something he’d practiced. No need to worry them any more. Jon reached up and took the tape. “The Unknowing is going to be here?”  
Helen nodded, her impossible hair separating from her in some places, only to reattach in others. “And they won’t let me in to see it! I might try and find a way around, but I can’t be certain it’ll work during the ritual. Sorry!”   
“Right. Thank you.”   
“Yeah, sure, sure. I’m gonna take Melanie home, she really shouldn’t be walking all the way to her apartment on that leg, even if the pain medicine’s working well, so bye now!” Helen and her bright yellow door vanished, and Jon could hear Melanie’s startled screech faintly from somewhere else in the Institute.  
Jon put the tape in his bag, his fingers brushing against the journal. The Eye still offered no commentary on it. “Tim, I’m sorry I suggested we bring David-7, I’ll think of something else we can-”  
“No, no I wanna come!” David-7’s voice was shrill, and, that couldn’t be right, excited? “Okay, listen, I know it’s all scary and dangerous and everything, but everything in my life so far has been scary and dangerous, and I haven’t been able to do anything about it.” His eyes gleamed with something intense and determined. “I want to do something, and you’re clearly gonna be doing something, and I want to do it too!”  
Jon looked up and met Tim’s eyes. “Okay. Okay, we should probably practice it ahead of time so we’re sure it’ll work when we need it to.”   
Tim nodded. “I’ll come back tomorrow for that, and at the end of the week for the plastic explosives, assuming it’ll be when we expected it.” He nudged David-7. “You gonna get some sleep here or at Elias’s apartment?”  
He shifted on his feet. “Can I come with you instead? His decorations creep me out.”   
“Yeah, sure.” Tim held a hand out to him and swung David-7’s hand gently between them. He’s tired. Tired and lost and you’ve stolen his purpose. Jon shook his head. There was so much more to it, he wasn’t trapped anymore. He had someone, and it didn’t make up for his brother and Sasha, but it was something important and maybe that was enough. No matter what the Eye had to say about it.   
David-7 might have been a creation of one of the entities, but he hadn’t chosen to be. He was going to have to remember that. Helen hadn’t chosen this either, and he was going to have to be nicer to her, especially if they would need her help accessing the world occupied by the Extinction.   
Jon set aside the worries swimming through his mind and appreciated the calmness of being alone with Martin. He reached forward to take the last contract off the table, then leaned into his side. “I- I’m sorry for stalling this long, I’ll-”   
“What about you?”   
The question surprised him. After all he’d put him through, why on Earth would he care? He shouldn’t. Jon turned his head away. “I can’t. I- I think I’m too closely tied to the Institute, to the Eye. But, you aren’t, I can fix this much at least, I can let you go.”   
Martin gently tugged the paper out of his hands. “No, don’t. I’m staying.”  
He still didn’t meet his eyes, looking instead at their shoes. “It really isn’t that bad, the first one just surprised me, it’s fine-” He heard paper rustling as Martin set the contract down, just out of his reach.   
“I’m staying, Jon. I- I’m not going to leave you, I’d rather stay here with you than be normal alone.” His entire body jerked slightly with his dry laugh. “What’s normal after all this, anyways?”  
Jon didn’t laugh. He buried his face in Martin’s shoulder and didn’t try to figure out what was causing the knot in his stomach. “I don’t want to trap you here, Martin.”  
Martin continued on. “So I could just, what, go back to doing nothing, lying on my resume again? Absolutely not. Where am I going to find job security like this?”  
He is trying to make you feel better. Knowing that made him cry for no reason that he wanted to identify.   
“Hey, hey, Jon. Jon, listen to me.” Martin was shaking him gently. Jon looked at him out of the corner of his eye and this was enough for Martin. “I don’t want to leave. I can’t, I mean, what if Elias comes back? What if he possesses you? If I’m here, I can keep you safe.”  
“I haven’t been doing a good job of that.” Breathing took a Herculean effort and Jon decided to focus on just that for a while.  
“It’s okay. We know more now, we’ll do better.” He was quiet for a moment. “Are you really going to go stop the Unknowing?”  
Something was wrong about his voice. Was he worried? He loves you, the static supplied, and Jon hated it for telling him something Martin should have had the chance to say, and himself for not realizing it sooner.   
“Yes. Tim is going to go whether I help him or not, and I can’t just-”  
“I know. I know.” He set the contract on his lap and folded it into thirds with neat, careful creases. “Can I help?”  
Panic coursed through Jon. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Stay behind, stay safe. Please.” His heart was beating so hard he could hear the rush of blood in his ears, and he finally clicked together why. It was out of his mouth almost before he realized he was speaking at all. “I love you.”  
When he finally dared to look back up at Martin, he was beaming. “I- I didn’t think- I love you too.” He laced their fingers together. “Promise me you’ll come back?”  
“I swear.”


	35. Chapter 35

It wasn’t Jude’s first time driving with a body in the trunk. She knew the standard rules, don’t speed, don’t tailgate, don’t engage in any reckless behavior that might draw the attention of the police or cause a crash. It was an absolutely infuriating way to drive, but it kept people from noticing anything untoward. 

This time, however, was the first time the body had been alive, and definitely the first time it had powers. Her brake lights were blown, as were the headlights and blinkers. Streetlights they passed exploded, leaving a trail of darkness and evidence. Jude carried on, pressing as fast as she dared, trying to keep some portion of lit road in sight. Eventually she gave up and yanked the car off the road and into a pasture. The broken lights would hide the broken fence until daylight, and then she could be away. 

She threw the door open so hard the whole car shook and stalked over to the trunk. She popped it open and sat on the lip, staring down at her victim. 

“You know, you don’t have to be such a bitch about this.” The bound and gagged woman glared up at her. “I mean, just because you  _ can _ blow every light on the road doesn’t mean you have to.”

She got a snort in response. “No, I’m serious. I’m kidnapping you, and you can’t get out of it, no matter how fussy you are.” An eye roll. Really? “Look, it’s not even like I’m gonna hurt you or anything, just ‘cause I’m with the Desolation. Jeez, so judgmental.”

The woman audibly smacked her head into the floorboard. “Okay, okay, to be fair, yes, normally I would be hurting you. But, I’ve got a job. Can you imagine? Me, with responsibility.” She laughed. “It’s so stupid, right? And she’s probably gonna make me go get the other ones too.” She looked down at her captive. “I think I was probably supposed to like, recruit you or something. This was easier.”

She huffed as much as the gag would allow her to. “Okay, right, easier for me. But what was I supposed to say? Come help me help the Stranger with their ritual, and like, maybe betray them and rule the apocalypse with me as my wife when I turn it into a Desolation ritual and become Queen of the End Times? That would be so dumb.” She smacked her forehead. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I said that. Okay, well I can just tell her we can’t take the gag out because of spells, right? Right.” 

She looked down to find the woman staring up at her with an arched eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’d be down for that. You have your own god to serve, I can’t risk you double crossing me while I’m double crossing Nikola.” The woman shrugged. “Yeah, you’re right, it’d be crazy hard to hide the extra explosives from her by myself. Think you could use dark powers to do it?” Another shrug. “Hmmm. We might be onto something here.” 

She tugged the gag out of her mouth. “What’s your name?”

The woman moved her mouth around for a while before answering. “Aurora.”

Goddess of the dawn. How ironic. “Cool. Nice to meet you, Aurora. So, we gonna be able to make this work?”

Aurora gave a short, dry laugh that sounded closer to a cough. “I like being queen better than I like being tied up.”

Jude reached behind her and burnt the ropes away. “Great. You can take shotgun, I’ll bring you up to speed.” 

She clambered out of the car and shook herself. “I think I got most of it. The Stranger avatar is doing a big ritual with every fear, you’re gonna use explosives to make it a Desolation ritual?”

Jude nodded. “That’s about it. We’ve already got the Spiral, the Web, the Hunt, the Buried, of course the Stranger and us, and Nikola said she’d handle the Eye. Got any ideas for how to speed up the rest?” 

Aurora pursed her lips. “Well, there’s this Corruption manifestation that took over one of our churches, we can scrape some up and like. I dunno, paint with it? It just has to be there, right?”

That sounded like mold. Jude shivered. “Yeah, let’s get some really thick tupperware to do that.”

Her laugh was surprisingly pretty when it was genuine. “Alright, we'll stop at Asda first.”


	36. Chapter 36

Jon shut the door to his office with a sigh and clicked the lock shut. He resisted the urge to check the time, but the static informed him it was three quarters past midnight anyways. He didn’t really need to lock the door, as with Martin asleep on the break room cot, he was the only person still around the Institute at the late hour. Still, he felt safer with it, as if Magnus was going to come try to break the door down to take the book back. 

He sat down and pushed away all the tapes and records he’d already looked through and pulled the leather journal out of his bag. Magnus had hidden it in his most secure spot, along with the secret to his existence. Whatever was inside had to be....

Something. It had to be something. No point speculating when he could just read. Jon untied it and flipped it open, trying hard not to feel like he was unleashing a curse upon the world. The plate inside did not say Lietner, which would have been a relief if it had not instead proclaimed the book to be the private journal of one Jonah Magnus. But then, he supposed he knew that already. 

It took a while to get to anything he hadn’t already heard in a roundabout way from the statements of Magnus’s colleagues and Gerry. He’d gone through the process of investigating and identifying the entities and their manifestations and avatars, and kept a very thorough record of the horrors he’d witnessed other people suffer. Jon had to stop reading at times and resist flicking through to more present day entries. It was important to know the full story. 

Jonah Magnus had been friends with the early definers of the powers, not the first to serve them, but the first to give them names and study them. Smirke’s theories about the rituals had gone unquestioned, and as far as anyone knew, none had ever been successfully completed.

Except. Magnus knew almost immediately that the rituals did not work as had been predicted, because he was the first to complete one. Jon wanted to skip over his description of how he’d completed the Watcher’s Crown but found himself unable to do so. The ritual was of secrets and of revelation, and it ended with the unwitting participants dead, a perfect cap to a ritual of secrets held in secret. Jon shuddered. The Eye was not as harmless as fear as he sometimes tried to make himself believe. 

But Magnus had found that the blood he’d split did not pave the way for a new world of terror which he could rule. He’d been granted gifts, powerful ones, that expanded his capabilities as an avatar and gave him the ability to possess others. 

It was not enough. 

So he founded the Institute and began working on his plan. His new insight showed him where he’d gone wrong. What he served was Fear itself, though he affiliated with only one aspect. He would need to incorporate the others to be truly successful, so he made use of the time he had been gifted and made connections.

The Lukases, the Fairchilds, and all the knowledge and artifacts that people brought to him. He wrote a new ritual, a simpler one, that required only an incantation and an Archivist. Jon snapped the journal shut and dug through his pockets for his phone, ignoring the voice of the Eye that told him it was half past four. He needed to see it from something else.

It was 4:28 am to be exact, and his heart should not have been racing as though he’d been running a marathon. Jon set the phone down and reached for the journal again. If a ritual needed the participation of all fourteen, it might not just be Magnus that would attempt one. In fact, Helen had said as much about Nikola’s upcoming ritual. He needed to know more. 

Magnus thought his ritual would leave him with great power over the ruined apocalypse, and his Archivist would be wholly devoured by the Eye upon the ritual’s completion. Of course, no one had ever done it before and even the Eye could not predict the success or failure of anything that hadn’t yet been tried. Still, Jon decided he would much rather not find out whether he was right or wrong.

He’d had a lot of trouble with his archivists. The first few were loath to leave the safety of the Institute, good servants of the Eye, but lacking the drive and curiosity it took to come into contact with anything more dangerous than a dust bunny. Gertrude had solved that problem, but presented a whole host of others. She was wickedly smart, and far too cautious. She’d caught him. He’d had to take action himself to correct that. It wasn’t something he did often.

And then he’d found Jon. Already marked with the dubious blessing of the Mother of Spiders, the ideal candidate. More curious than his predecessors, and less well informed than Gertrude. Jon’s hands strayed to itch at his scars in turn as Jonah described his delight at each and every one. He’d set up some encounters, and simply allowed others. It was little wonder he’d received no help from the Institute when Nikola had taken him. Magnus had told her where to find him.

One by one, the list of fears grew shorter until the journal abruptly stopped, the day before David-7 had arrived. All that was left were the Buried, Slaughter, End, and Flesh, and Jon had somehow managed to mark himself with that one without Magnus’s help at all. 

Jon pushed the journal away from himself and let out a shaky, nervous laugh. It was dangerously close to completion. Unless Magnus was wrong? Maybe the rituals didn’t work at all. He couldn’t possibly take that chance. 

He would avoid the remaining three fears then, except that to stop Nikola’s version of the same ritual, he would need to go to Lost John’s Cave, a stronghold of the Buried, where Nikola would have gathered something of the Slaughter and End. He barely recognized the feeling of coldness wrapping around his lungs as fear, but it was familiar enough.

So he wouldn’t read the incantation. That, at least, he could control. Except...

Except he was able to compel people into saying things they never would just by asking a question, and he was fairly sure he wasn’t an avatar yet, much less one that had completed a ritual. Magnus might actually be able to  _ make _ him read it somehow.

It was going to have to wait. Magnus wasn’t here right now, but Nikola was, and if the Unknowing was actually a possible world ending event, he was going to need to take it more seriously. The full moon it was supposed to be on was only a few days away now. 


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW for misgendering, though out of idiocy rather than maliciousness

The hallway just did not end. Triexel had never started trying to map it, but he was reasonably sure he’d been walking in circles, despite never once turning. Except, maybe he had turned a few times. It was hard to tell. 

There was another door, much like the one he’d come in. He always went through the door, and he always was back in the hall. Still! This time it might be different. Triexel went through the door.

And suddenly he was out of the hall! He didn’t know where he was exactly, but it was very bright and it was not the hall. “Oh, freedom, sweet relief! Thank the Board!” Triexel collapsed to the ground- which was strangely hot and dirty. Board, that was a lot of dirt. He looked down to inspect the suspiciously dirty floor closer to find that he was in fact kneeling on dirt. He appeared to be outside, on a planet that had not invented buildings yet. 

He turned to find the door still behind him and a tall being that reminded him of Phelix from that one party on Kivaral leaning against it. He squinted. “Phelix? Is that you? What are you doing here?” Understanding dawned on him. “Aha, you must have been invited to that awful party on that awful planet David-7 designed, oh, Phelix, I’m so sorry, I should have stopped that treacherous-” 

Phelix cleared his throat. “Um. No. My name is Helen! Not Phelix. I have something I’d like you to do for me.”

Well that just didn’t make any sense. Phelix must be confused. “Oh, of course, anything you’d like, we’re old friends after all.”

Phelix fixed him with a blank but oddly expressive stare. He did not know what that stare was meant to be expressing, but it certainly was expressive. “...Right. So, because you’re such a good friend, you’re going to go into this hole right here,” Phelix gestured to a hole in the cliff they were standing besides. Had they always been by the cliff? Well, there must have been since the door he’d come out of was attached to it. “And you’re going to look around, and then come back up here and tell me what you see.”

What an easy thing, he should have said so sooner! “I don’t have to go in the cave to do that, I can tell you what I see already! I see that hole, I see this dirt, I see that door, I see that cliff, I see whatever Boardawful star is this planet’s sun, Board, that’s so bright, where was I, oh, and I see you, Phelix!” Triexel beamed. He was so good at this. Triexel Geistman, always happy to help a friend out.

The sound Phelix made was something like when the vents were about to blow really hot air at him. “No. No. I want you,” Phelix pointed at him, “to go in there,” Phelix pointed at the hole, “and tell me what you see in there. There’s a, a party! A party that I’m not invited to. But you! You’re invited. I want to know what the party looks like!”

Triexel nodded solemnly. He hated to be left out of things too. “Alright. Alright, Phelix old chap, I’ll do it for you. It will be difficult! But for you, I’ll do it.”

The hole was tight and he needed help from Phelix pushing him along to get very far inside of it. It was very dark and he couldn’t see anything at all, including what must have been a rather large drop, about forty feet judging by how much his bones hurt. It was a bit like crawling through the vents. 

He could see a bit of light up ahead and scurried forwards. There were people! Oh, it was a party alright. And these dastardly fellows hadn’t invited good old Phelix! However, they’d had enough good taste to invite him...

Triexel stood up from his hiding place and walked into the party. “You may rejoice, for Triexel Geistman is now here! The party may begin in earnest.” He spread his arms wide, waiting for the applause he rightfully should have received. 

A being he didn’t recognize that was dressed like a circus ringmaster- his parents had taken him to the circus once, and they hadn’t noticed when he got lost- bounded up to him. “And which entity are you, then? I already have a Spiral representative, you know.”

How did they not know who he was? “I am not named Spiral! I am Triexel Geistman! I am a very important businessman at Stella Firma. You invited me!” 

The ringmaster brought its hands up to where its face would have been if it had had a face. “Hmmm. Does that mean you’re Vast, then?”

Did it just call him fat? This could not stand! “Did you just call me fat?” 

Another being like the first but dressed like a ballerina twirled up behind it. “Do you think maybe he’s normal?”

“I am Triexel Geistman, how dare-”

“Normal people would be afraid, he has to be one of us somehow.”

“-you insinuate that I’m-”

“But what could he possibly be?”

“-anything other than-”

“I don’t know, but we’ll have him dance just in case.”

“-an extremely important person, do you know who my parents are? No, really, do you, because they never seem to open up to me and I really just want a relationship with them, but no! No, the world is cruel and unjust to poor Triexel and did you say dance? I love to dance!” Triexel then demonstrated this love by showing off some of his favorite moves.

“...We can put him in the Dark corner whenever Jude gets back with one of the obscured. It’ll be fine.”


	38. Chapter 38

Daisy’s voice was muffled by her pillow and a hazy fog of sleep. “Who was it?”

Basira set her phone facedown on the bedside table and watched its light seep underneath the edges for a moment. “Melanie. She said Jon found something about how to leave the Institute.”

Her girlfriend grumbled herself into a state of higher wakefulness. “Really.” She shifted behind Basira. “He told me it could wait until tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow, or past midnight at least.” This conversation could certainly wait. Basira didn’t like being woken up at such a strange hour, but she supposed it had been important, and it was always nice when Melanie reached out of her own accord. She had been worried about her, not just because of her injury earlier but because of how much she’d been distancing herself from all of them. 

Daisy snorted. “Sure, fine.” Basira could feel her nervous energy in the way her muscles coiled and relaxed like a panther warming up before a strike, and was about to ask her what was wrong when Daisy bumped her forehead between her shoulder blades. “So, are you going to do it?”

Basira yawned. “Yeah, I told her that was fine. I think I’m already fired by now, so I guess I won’t be going into work tomorrow.” Daisy’d been acting strange since she stalked Jon out to his office, but she didn’t have the energy to try and puzzle out why. It was just more information she’d get from one source or another eventually.

“Already?” And that was the tone that meant something was not going to be let go. Basira tried her best to blink awake, Daisy wasn’t going to let her go back to sleep until she’d sorted out whatever was bothering her.

“Yes, the whole burning the employment contract, something about it not existing to the Eye if there isn’t a record of it.” It sounded solid enough, and since Jon was their only boss for the moment, there didn’t seem to be a reason he couldn’t do that. 

Daisy was far too still and far too quiet. It was really good news, and she would have been cracking open a bottle of champagne herself if their bed wasn’t too cozy to get out of. “Hey, I got fired. Congratulate me.” She elbowed Daisy in the ribs and she startled back to life. 

“Right, right, I’m sorry, but...” She was definitely not going to be allowed to sleep anytime soon. “Isn’t it... too easy?”

“Does it have to be difficult?”

“Well, no, I mean, I guess not.” She was hiding something. She was absolutely terrible at hiding things.

“Spit it out, Daisy.”

Her forehead bumped into her back again, like a cat trying to assert its friendliness. “It’s just that I talked to Jon earlier, and his theory for how to leave then was to blind yourself. Had evidence and everything.”

Right. She’d been cagey since then. Probably agreed not to tell, but then regretted it. Honestly, it was impressive she’d kept quiet this long. “Maybe he found something new. Most buildings have more than one door.”

“Yeah, yeah, maybe. It’s just that nothing about the supernatural bullshit we’ve been dealing with has ever been easy, and I- I’m just worried.”

“You think Jon’s got it wrong?” It wouldn’t be the first time she’d watched Daisy clash with her reclusive and paranoid boss. The more secretive a person was, the more Daisy fixated on them. A tendency of the Hunt, certainly, but her tenacity was one of the things Basira loved about her. 

“I think he can’t see past his own fear to what’s best for everyone else. Being blind would be a living hell for him, and... And he doesn’t realize it just isn’t that way for everyone else too. That turning into a monster is so much worse.”

“I’m not turning into a monster, Daisy.” They’d had this conversation before, many, many times. Basira had felt the Eye’s influence before joining the Institute, a revelation that had come in retrospect with the greater experience she could pull from now. But it was subtle, and it had always left her in control rather than the other way around. As long as she stayed out of its spotlight, in the margins, she would be alright. She wouldn’t be as consumed as Jon or Daisy.

Of course, that wouldn’t stop Daisy from fretting. As much as she hated knowing she was an avatar, she would do whatever it took to prevent Basira from joining her. Basira fought a shiver. She was loved, as much as a horse with an infection was loved. Daisy would do whatever it took to keep her good.

Not to say that Daisy hated being an avatar. The wall of red strings connecting pictures and newsclippings in their living room spoke to that. She loved the thrill of the hunt, the chase, the closing in on her prey. She just hated that her passion was being used for evil more than she loved it all.

She was trying to quit too. She really, really was. Basira would now get phone calls when she decided to stake out a house, instead of sitting alone, watching the door and phone, and puzzling out where she was now and if she could catch up to her, and trying not to feel like a war widow. Now, Daisy would drop things if she asked, like when she’d let Hopsworth go because Basira called her. It was as close to normal as she figured she could ever be, and it was enough.

In truth, Basira would never make her drop hunting entirely. She wanted to see cases through just as much, to know what the truth was, to uncover the answer to the mystery. It was very little wonder the Eye had found her so easy to integrate into its world. She fit nicely. But as long as she remained, Daisy would be scared that another person she loved and trusted would become something else. 

So, she agreed to quit, while it was easy. After all, there was nothing preventing her from following up leads of her own accord, even cut loose from the Institute. And, if it turned out that Jon was wrong about the contracts, then she would stay. She would stay on the periphery, out of the spotlight, out of danger. It was enough. She could keep both Daisy and her own curiosity satisfied. 

Daisy’s arm around her waist pulled her closer. “I know. I love you.”

“I love you too.” Fortunately, it seemed like she was done fretting for tonight. But Basira was awake now. “What do you think about David-7?”

“Sweet kid, dangerous as all hell. Even more dangerous because he isn’t trying to be.”

“I meant do you think he’s just Elias trying to screw with us?” The thought hadn’t quite gotten out of Basira’s mind. Granted, she’d watched him click a pen in complete and utter fascination for ten minutes, and she didn’t genuinely believe Elias was that dedicated. But Daisy would know.

“Nah. He smells different.” Daisy’s voice was evening back out after her earlier fright. She’d be asleep soon, which meant that the next few minutes was the most forthright she’d be all day.

“What do you mean he smells different?” She’d mentioned scents before, but Basira had mostly assumed she was being metaphorical.

Daisy yawned. “I mean, Elias is all starch and lettuce and paper smell. David-7 smells like that too, but he’s more...” For a moment Basira wondered if Daisy had fallen asleep. “Afraid. I’ve never smelt Elias be afraid, ever. David is afraid of everything. All the time. It’s pretty obvious he’s not Elias.”

Basira ran her fingers over Daisy’s knuckles, one at a time as she listened to her girlfriend’s breaths even into a sleep that was only occasionally interrupted by fidgeting. She could smell fear. She wondered why that hadn’t come up before. She wondered if, one day, she would be able to  _ see _ it.


	39. Chapter 39

“This is disgusting.” 

Aurora didn’t comment on Jude’s astute observation. Her former church was nearly unrecognizable, completely covered in a greenish blue slime that webbed across its surface in intricate patterns. Even the ground leaving up to it was sticky with the stuff.

She didn’t know what they’d done to piss off the Corruption. Maybe it was as simple as crossing some unseen line of territory, stealing it’s potential victim once too often. Maybe one of their number had been a refugee of the other power. Or maybe it was just dumb luck that it was their church that had grown heavy with rot and stale from the hungry grasp of the mold that never ceased. Whatever the cause, it had scattered them.

Her family had left the small town entirely, afraid that obeying their pastor and simply choosing a new house of worship would not be enough to escape. They weren’t the only ones, and their new church, far away, had been smaller but still full of familiar faces. 

She’d been young when the first patch of something unwelcome and unholy had begun to spread behind the pulpit. She was barely a teen when part of the wall had caved in and revealed just how deep the infection ran. What she knew of it was mostly from listening in on hushed conversations between her parents, and their hurried whispers to unknown parties over the phone.

Some had tried to fight it, but the fungus grew even better with exposure to the Dark, and none of them dared desecrate their holy place with firelight. So the small church with no stained glass fell to the rot that had quietly taken hold in its core. 

If any of her people had stayed and thrived in this place, Aurora didn’t know of them, and she wasn’t eager to reconnect. Doubtlessly they’d have something to say about her family’s flight, so she was oddly grateful for the first few rays of daybreak that ensured no one of the faith, aside from herself, would interrupt them. 

She voiced none of this to Jude, as it was not her story to know, instead simply pulling on the rubber gloves they’d bought. Or rather, she’d bought. Jude’s touch made things melt. Aurora had observed curiously that the things in her life were built to accommodate that. She carried only cash, rather than a plastic credit card. Her phone case was made of glass, her steering wheel was metal, and the seats of her car were covered in fabric, scorched in places and still smelling faintly of burnt pleather beneath. What a lonely existence she must lead, Aurora concluded, unable to touch any person except those most like herself.

Jude’s knife had a bone handle, charred at the grip, but it felt secure in Aurora’s hand as she stabbed gingerly into the mold. It clung greedily to the blade until she scraped it into their tupperware. It seemed like perfectly normal mold when she watched it head on, but from the corner of her eye it writhed and pulsated like a living beast. Aurora snapped the lip shut and wrapped Jude’s duct tape around and around and around until she couldn’t see even a hint of the wretched thing. 

The strange woman who’d kidnapped her leaned against the car, waiting for her to get back. “Does it feel good? Like taking revenge?”

The trunk was open, where she’d spent the beginning of their relationship. She found it quite funny that she was the one to place their new captive in it. “You know nothing of my life.”

It wasn’t a rebuke or admonishment, merely a fact. Jude was rather overly friendly, and Aurora did not trust that. Whether she needed her or not, she was very quick to assume that they were alike. They were not.

Jude was clearly where she was out of a personal drive and desire to bring about harm. Aurora, on the other hand, had never had any other route that she could have taken. Her family were the guardians of an age old tradition, and she was duty bound to carry on the work of their order. Jude acted like she’d never met an obligation she hadn’t set fire to. Taking the mold was no revenge, it felt more like a ceasefire. For the moment, cooperation would suit her role best, so she would draft the silent peace treaty that could keep the Corruption still and nonviolent as they carried it away.

“Geez, fine. Just making conversation.” Jude stood up properly and motioned to the car. “It’s a long drive, let’s head out. You like rock music?” 

“Moderately.” It was going to be a long drive indeed. She hoped Jude would allow her to sleep as the sunrise painted a golden glow on the landscape.


	40. Chapter 40

Tim had almost jumped out of his skin when he’d woken up to David-7’s arms wrapped around his middle. He was cuddlier than an octopus, which Tim would have been fine with, if he had been wearing any other face. He took some time to calm himself and remember Jon’s assertion the day before that he was from the Extinction, not the Stranger. Tim could deal with the Extinction, even an excessively clingy manifestation of it. 

He unwrapped himself from his grip and got dressed before heading into the kitchen. They’d gotten to sleep late, David-7 had had so many questions, about the most mundane things. He was still somewhat fascinated by the concept of a bed, and had declared that Tim’s was much cozier than Elias’s- or Jonah’s, he was still processing that one- bed, which was apparently stiff. Pillows, lamps, the carpet, and his dresser had all been met with similar fascination. 

It wasn’t his reaction to the furniture that made Tim want to fistfight his asshole boss, and their shadowy ‘Board,’ though. It was how he seemed surprised by the most basic kindness Tim could manage, how he held his food close to him as if Tim wanted to snatch it away, how he didn’t so much as take a step anywhere he wasn’t explicitly invited.

Tim sighed and cleared enough of his counter to mix some pancake batter he’d bought before fast food and snacks were all he could stomach. It had chocolate chips. 

He could hear David stirring in the bedroom, and then a solid thunk which was probably his stack of Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks being knocked over. He tried not to be too annoyed, he’d needed to clean up anyways, and probably should have before inviting him over. Not that he had invited him, but anyways. He was here now. 

Water ran in the bathroom, then stopped, then ran again. Tim caught a smile on his lips picturing David-7 turning the handle back and forth, but a moment of reflection on why running water was so incredible to him wiped it away. 

He deserved better than this, going straight from that world into their supernatural bullshit. Tim wished he could give him more normal, more pancakes and more snowcones and more music. But damaging the Stranger while it was possible, keeping more things like what had happened to his brother and Sasha from happening to anyone else, he couldn’t pass that up. And whatever came after that- if anything did- was going to have to wait.

The pancakes sizzled on the stove and Tim watched them dispassionately. They were going back to the Magnus Institute today, even though by rights he shouldn’t have to anymore, to test whether David-7 could actually get them away from danger on command. It was the last thing Tim wanted to do, but he recognized the necessity of it. Being able to get away, without retracing a route through the caves, was going to be essential. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

David came out wearing Elias’s suit, rumpled from where it had laid on the floor after being exchanged for a set of Tim’s pajamas. Right. His clothes were the wrong size to borrow, and David didn’t have anything other than what he’d found in Elias’s closet. The most interesting thing Tim could imagine coming out of there was maybe a pair of weed socks. He’d have to take him shopping.

The pancakes were done, and David-7 poked at them suspiciously when Tim set them down in front of him. “What’s this?” He poked harder and exclaimed in surprise. “It’s fluffy!”

“They’re pancakes, Tim said around a mouthful of his own. “With chocolate chips.” 

David nodded uncertainly and struggled to pull off a bit with his fork. When he finally managed to get some in his mouth, his eyes went wide. “This is very good. You said they're pan cakes? Why aren’t they just cakes?”

Tim shrugged. “They’re flatter? Like a pan.” David nodded, apparently accepting this guess as fact. “So, big day today.”

“Yes! I’m finally going to figure out how my superpower works!” Superpower. Not how Tim would describe random teleportation, but if it made him feel better.

“Well, yeah, that too. More importantly, I’m getting you something to wear.”

David looked down at his suit. “I’m wearing something. Do people wear more than one thing here?” He looked over at Tim, apparently registering that he was wearing something he hadn’t seen before. “Oh, no, at home all I had was my onesie.”

Tim was torn between a now familiar rush of anger at the Extinction and how it ran its mini universe, and the absolute hilarity of the sudden realization that wherever his shitty boss was, he had nothing besides a onesie to wear. It really couldn’t have happened to a better guy. He steadied his face into as neutral an expression as he could manage. “Yeah, that is absolutely correct, we'll go when you're done with the pancakes.”

* * *

David-7 was remarkably hard to shop with. He frightened easily, and had never been around so many people, or seen anyone younger than a young adult before. Tim had spent quite a lot of time reassuring him that the little humans bumbling around were a normal occurrence. To make matters worse, he took issue with the overly bright fluorescent lighting and gravitated to the darkest store in the mall, Hot Topic.

Tim faced away from the window, head down, and pointedly ignored the nearby teenagers fawning over the ridiculous chibi statues. He hadn’t set foot here in years, and David was about to make him break his streak of buying band merch direct from the bands themselves. A shirt with a Green Day cover loomed in the corner of his eye and it took most of his self restraint to focus on what David was looking at instead. 

He doubted the Doctor Who dresses sold here would fit, but he waited as patiently as he could for him to try anyways. Hadn’t Melanie recorded all their sizes that one time? He texted her while David struggled to get out of the dress Tim could have told him would be too tight. 

Her reply lit up his phone as he managed to coax David-7 into another store. He quickly drew his attention to the trendy but generic shirts on display, and away from the rack of socks nearby. Armed with Elias’s clothing sizes, the main hurdle now was finding something that David liked.

He ended up with an armful of crop tops, because he’d seen a few people pass by in them and was amazed that that was allowed. He was likewise enamored with the aisle of booty shorts, and Tim supposed that all tracked. He’d be pretty enamored with them too if he’d grown up wearing a onesie. 

The real problems arose when they reached the shoes. David predictably refused socks, and of course this made any tennis shoe he tried uncomfortable. Tim suggested sandals, and thought he could neatly solve this minor dilemma, but then David noticed the crocs resting besides them.

Tim took a deep breath. David had literally never heard of fashion before. He could buy the crocs if the crocs made him happy. It was all going on Elias’s credit card anyways. This was totally fine. Totally fine. He was not screaming inside. _Elias would hate it more,_ a rumbling voice reminded him. Yeah, yeah, he would. This really was okay.

They passed a Build-A-Bear on the way out, and Tim preemptively stopped David-7's question. "No, we can't, not today, I'm sorry."

"Why not?" They were going to have to talk about color coordination at some future date, the yellow floral top and red shorts were almost as difficult to look at as Helen was. 

"Honestly?" Tim felt like he was tempting fate with his answer, but not as much as they would be by going in. "Because we are incredibly lucky no one evil has tried to talk to us so far, and there is a non zero chance that the bears would come to life and eat us."

"Oh." David was quiet and simply followed along after Tim to the exit. "I don't think I'd like that very much."


	41. Chapter 41

Nikola pressed her head firmly against the cool rock and counted slowly to ten, and then backwards from ten to zero, and then to four, and to four again, and-

“Get the fuck away from my explosives or I  _ swear _ -”

_ One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one- _

“-on my dance floor, Nikola said this was  _ my  _ dance floor, and now you’ve got all  _ your _ things on it-”

“Hey, it’s only for now, you can have your space back when Jude’s done working-”

“The fuck he can,  _ I’m _ calling all of this space now because  _ fuck you! _ ”

_ -two, three, four, one, two, three, four- _

“Hey! _ We _ were going to dance here, you can’t call it!” 

“I still don’t know you.”

“Sure you do, Jeremy, there was that Christmas party, remember, and-”

_ “Well I am about to blow this whole place up just so none of you fuckers can-” _

She really needed to go handle this, but Nikola couldn’t bring herself to move away from the wall. This was only the most recent of the disturbances caused by the mysterious new dancer, and the- oddly willing- obscured seemed to be mediating between him and the kindling well enough for now. She did not want to check whether they had successfully convinced him to wear pants.

The Fairchild girl had graciously brought a Lukas she described as her boyfriend, though the truth of that was dubious and beyond Nikola’s mental capacity to contemplate at the moment, and a bottle of red wine, since it was evidently good manners to bring alcohol to a party. It was the wine that was their undoing. 

The mystery man- he had a name but Nikola refused to so much as think it lest it cursed her more- had bolted across the cavern to snatch the bottle and proceeded to down it all in one go. He’d then gone on something of a rampage, the details of which made Nikola’s nonexistent breath catch in her plastic throat. 

_ One, two, three, four, one two, three, four. _

The Web would need to remake most of the costumes. Someone would have to go track down the wolf, the poor thing. She hoped he hadn’t frightened the Hunt right out of it, though it was probably also lucky it hadn’t torn his leg off. He might have been easier to handle in that case, though. She didn’t want to know how he’d managed to climb the cavern wall, but he’d fallen on one of her marionettes and they were still being repaired. 

She’d tried to place him in a dog pen Jude’s new obscured friend went out to get, but he’d wriggled his sweaty body right through the bars. The wolf’s muzzle was similarly ineffective at slowing his steady stream of incessant nonsense, as he chewed through the ropes that should have kept it around his head. If she was being divinely punished for her hubris, this monstrosity was not befitting of her crime.

And she still didn’t know what he was meant to represent. Surely he was a gift from one patron they’d overlooked, but which one it could be eluded her. None of the powers she knew to be as incessantly annoying as this man, and none were associated with such pure hedonism. Even the Spiral had the wherewithal to stick to its own aesthetic, and was polite enough to adhere to clothing. 

Perhaps he was here because she’d inadvertently slighted an entire pantheon- or worse, multiple? He was certainly a deadringer for what little that she knew of the followers of Dionysus. But surely they would have had the manners to introduce themselves properly rather than just run amuck, and she really did not want to contemplate how many more dancers she would need to gather if this theory held.

Behind her, a fight was breaking out between the dreaded Triexel and the obscured girl- Jude said her name was Aurora. From the little she could hear, Triexel was trying to snort the mold that the kindling and obscured had brought as the Corruption representative.

_ One, two, three, four, one two, three, four. _

Good. If she was lucky, either the Dark or the Corruption would kill him. Nikola straightened and went to check on the healing progress of her wounded acolyte. The lunar solstice was fast approaching.


	42. Chapter 42

She kept it together fairly well until the third time Helen woke her up to say some nonsensical Alice in Wonderland shit. Which, all things considered, was pretty damn nice in Melanie’s opinion. She could hear her banging around in her kitchen- probably scaring the cat- and decided against trying to talk to her right away.

Her leg still hurt, and now that the pain meds they’d found in the first aid kit- weirdly strong for what should have just been the basics, but logical, given that it was from the Magnus Institute- had worn off she didn’t want to get out of bed and test how well she could walk now. Besides, she was tired. 

It was a bone deep exhaustion that on another day she might have mistaken for depression. Maybe it  _ was _ depression, or some weird supernatural equivalent. Having the thing that fueled her and gave her a reason for everything she did taken away was like what she imagined taking a battery out of a robot would feel like. The world still existed around her and she was aware of it to some extent, but it couldn’t affect her in the way she’d almost decided was normal.

She spoke to people and smiled when appropriate, and even laughed sometimes, but none of that felt like anything more than a thin veneer, a façade of how she thought a person should act. Nothing made her soul burn like the heart-stopping anger that she could no longer summon, even when it should have been warranted. Even her resistances to it had always sparked a fierce sense of pride that her total victory utterly failed to.

The fact that she _ couldn’t _ feel the way she knew she should be feeling made her angry, but it too was shallow, just a shadow of the great leviathan that had spent months making a nest of her heart. 

Melanie had no words for this other than tired. 

She didn’t have to go to work, in fact she didn’t work there anymore, but she had wanted to see this through. It was no coincidence she and Jon had been friends once, they shared the same driving curiosity and propensity for trouble. But her leg hurt, and she was tired, so she pulled her pillow over her head to block the noises in the kitchen and stared down at her contact list.

Basira didn’t like to be double texted, she would be polite about it but she’d always mention it or ask why, and she’d texted her goodnight last, so she’d have to wait to talk to her. Daisy didn’t like to be woken up, and while she should have been awake at half past nine, Melanie really didn’t have the energy to talk to a cranky Daisy on the off chance they’d slept in. Again, she’d have to wait. 

She felt weird texting David through Elias’s phone, and briefly wondered if anyone had shown him how to use it yet. It was a major oversight, but it was also only his third day on Earth, and they’d been busy with the whole supernatural bullcrap. It was fine, she could hound Tim about teaching him later. 

**Tim**

9:34 am

u up?

9:35 am

Yeah

You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had

Tim sent: 📷 pic.1

9:35 am

omg

tell me you’re not letting him wear that

9:35 am

Hey, he likes it

Not gonna give the alien shit about not knowing earth style

9:36 am

fine

better let jon know before you get there

9:36 am

Uggggggghh

9:36 am

i’ll text him u big baby

Texting Jon was exactly the last thing she wanted to do. So far, no one had bothered her about the bullet in her leg. She really, really didn’t want to talk about it. Jon would want to talk about it. But Martin wouldn’t. She thanked her lucky stars for unobservant coworkers.

**Martin**

9:36 am

sup

how’s archiving?

9:38 am

Good morning, Melanie

How are you?

9:38 am

i asked u 1st

9:39 am

Archiving is great

I love stacks of papers

And moving stacks of papers

And reading stacks of papers

9:40 am

dude

sarcasm before 12?

u good?

there’s more of the stuff d&b gave me in the 1st aid kit

9:40 am

Got it 

Thanks

How’s your leg?

9:41 am

hurts

not coming in

have fun with the weird teleporty stuff without me

9:42 am

meant to tell u

tims bringing d7

don’t laugh

9:42 am

Why would I laugh?

9:43 am

Melanie sent: 📷 pic.1

9:43 am

Right

Don’t laugh

Thanks for the warning

9:44 am

tell jon

9:44 am

I will

9:44 am

k!

tell me how it goes

9:45 am

Yeah

I’ll live tweet it for you

9:45 am

u better

❤

Well, that was done. She was guaranteed updates on what the hell was going on, as soon as anyone else knew. Now, whether to get more rest or smooth things over with Helen?

She really didn’t want to get out of bed. And, the smell of bacon and coffee wafting in from her kitchen suggested she might not have much smoothing over to do. She felt like she should have been upset at Helen for getting into her stuff without her there, but she was just too tired to feel anything but relief at not accidentally pushing away another potential friend. She tucked her phone under her arm and tugged her pillow closer. Rest it was, then. Dealing with shit could wait just a little bit longer.


	43. Chapter 43

In between checking in on Melanie and waiting outside the cave for the rude Extinction man, Helen hadn’t had much time to do her usual nightly activities of roaming about as a door looking for people to frighten or abduct. Which was alright, her current activities were important, but  _ mercy _ was she ever bored.

She left the eggs (ball python, her favorite kind) and tiramisu out on the counter, covered with a teatowel to keep the heat in and the cat out, for whenever Melanie decided she wanted breakfast and went out for a walk. She’d just have to assume the other avatars had murdered Triexel since he’d never reemerged. This was fine with her, but she had picked him up from the Extinction’s domain and would probably need to not mention it to David-7. He might not like her if he knew she’d gotten someone like him killed.

He was a nice little human, one of very few she actually felt like herself around. Being herself was lovely, but it got lonely from time to time. After all, no one else in the world was a labyrinthine maze of impossible corridors. She had a bit of trouble fitting in. 

She plucked a sausage off a plate at an outdoor barbecue and nibbled on it while she walked through a Parisian garden. No one paid her any mind. It really was incredible what could be ignored if no one thought to look for it. 

It took her almost five minutes to count all the seagulls she could see from the crown of the Statue of Liberty. She briefly considered sketching one, but she hadn’t been able to hold a pencil right since... well. For a while. 

So she swung her legs out over the Nantucket pier and hummed to herself. It was a melody ingrained in her being that she was sure sounded nightmarish to humans listening, but was the sweetest lullaby to her ears. How funny, what a shift in perception could do. Someday she was going to have to stop thinking out what theirs must be. She had enough to worry about, what with simply existing. Trying to constantly see the world through the eyes of people who were so fundamentally different from herself was very tiring. 

But then, what was the point of existence if not to share it with others? Or was that itself a deeply human concept that had been leftover from Helen? But Helen was her now. Did that mean she ought to be more mindful of human concepts, even though they were now totally foreign to her? Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all. Things didn’t have to mean other things all of the time. They could just be, as could she. 

Still. It had been nice when Melanie spoke to her like she was a regular person, when she managed to make Tim laugh, when David-7 understood her without her having to repeat and rephrase. It had been nice. She would not be opposed to having more of that.

She sipped the coffee she’d gotten from somewhere along the way. It tasted Moroccan, perhaps she’d been to Morocco recently. Wherever she’d wandered to now, the sunset was beautiful. Not quite as pretty as in Sannikov land, but not bad at all. The cardboard cup in her hands had a logo she didn’t recognize, though she didn’t know if she would recognize many things. The longer she stared at them, the more distorted they tended to become. 

The entrance to Lost John’s Cave spouted no new set of footprints in the morning light, not that she really expected any. It was just due diligence to check every now and again. 

Melanie had fallen back asleep. She really needed to keep human sleep cycles in mind if she was going to try this friend thing, Melanie had been very upset at being woken up. She moved the untouched breakfast onto her nightstand and pulled her cat into a hug. She hummed her melody, and while the cat didn’t seem to enjoy it, it was too transfixed to flee. 

“You’d tell me if she hated me, right? Excellent. I trust you, as you seem to be a fine gentleman of discernment.” The cat wriggled about in her arms and she let it down. “You’re right, the laundry needs doing. Do you think she’ll mind?” 

Helen wasn’t exactly sure how many t-shirts she folded into robins, but it was at least as many as she folded into carpenter ants. Melanie would be so happy when she woke up. She’d finally have a friend again. They could talk and sing and... hmmm. Well. It might have been easier to decide on what one does with a friend if she could remember having any when she was Helen. Whether Helen didn't have any or she wasn't Helen enough to remember was well beside the point. But that was alright, Melanie would know. Melanie was very smart and an excellent first friend. 

Her phone was buzzing, rather loudly. Helen moved it under the bed so the carpet would muffle it and not wake Melanie. She was very tired recently, she’d told her that a lot the night before. Whoever wanted to talk was just going to have to wait. 


	44. Chapter 44

**Martin**

10:12 am

Everyone’s here now

Well, except you, of course

Basira drew up a list of variables for us to test

It’s a bit concerning

Just, here, look

10:13 am

Martin sent 📷 pic.2

See?

I don’t like that she has a perceived danger and a real danger category

Oh god Daisy brought a gun

Who am I kidding Daisy probably always has a gun

10:14 am

Did you know that Daisy owns a gun, because I did not know that

**Basira**

10:14 am

Martin told us you’re staying home today. Take care of yourself, let us know if we need to bring you more pain meds. ❤

**Tim**

10:15 am

Hey, so I’m kinda freaking out here?

I don’t want to get stuck in a murder stadium again

Do you have any other, like, yoga stuff?

Ways to help calm D7 down quick

10:17 am

Are you mad at me?

What did I do

10:18 am 

Ok I just googled some, we should be good

That’s it

All set

Ready to go

Wish us luck

**Martin**

10:18 am

We’re about to start

Tim’s got the jitters but David looks ready to murder someone

Or at least punch them with all the meager strength our paperwork addicted boss possesses

He must have some stuff from his old world to work out I guess

So, we’re skipping no external stimulation, touching no one, one person, and multiple people

All of them have come up before and he didn’t jump

10:19 am

So the first one is internal stimulation, touching no one

Except we can’t agree on how to make David freak himself out

10:20 am

What’s that death metal band you’ve always got on your headphones?

No relation to the present situation of course

I just want to listen to them

They sound cool from halfway across the room

**Daisy**

10:21 am 

I know you’re staying out of this and I respect that but I need your opinion here

What haunted place you filmed at scared you the most?

10:22 am

Like, not what you said in the video, I’ve watched them all already, but like which one actually got to you?

10:24 am 

That wasn’t actually supernatural.

**Elias**

10:25 am

Melanie? 

Tim said this is the best way to contact you.

How is it working? 

Can you hear me?

I don’t really get it

10:26 am

Everyone is arguing

It’s very loud, I don’t like it

10:27 am

I have a lot of other texts

I see that you don’t hear them now

I think someone named mr. big boy man is divorcing me?

Is that bad?

It sounds like it might be bad

Mr. big boy man also sent me a picture of his boat

Why did he send me a picture of a boat?

10:28 am

Is being sent a picture of a boat what a divorce is?

Should I ask tim about it?

Or is that bad?

Would tim not like me if he knew someone had sent me a picture of a boat?

Are you going to not like me now?

**Martin**

10:29 am

Ok, something freaked him out

So we can cross that one off the list

And Tim is patting his shoulder now so that’s one person, no jump

Basira’s trying to signal to Jon to go over there

They’re not communicating well

10:30 am

It’s a good thing we aren’t spies

10:31 am

He finally got it

THEY’RE GONE

**Tim**

10:31 am

It looks like I have cell signal

Are you getting this?

We’re in like a garbage dump or something

D7 found a pile of socks

10:32 am

He is not calming down any time soon

**Jon**

10:33 am

Please help me convince Martin we’re not in danger.

I have tried telling him we’re fine 4 times now.

He will not take my word for it.

10:34 am 

This one isn’t that bad, if you can get over the smell.

**Martin**

10:36 am

They’re texting me!

They’re alive

They aren’t back yet though

Melanie, what do I do???

**Daisy**

10:36 am

I swear to fuck if he doesn’t shut his trap I am going to kill him

**Tim**

10:38 am

I got him on this breathing in time with a gif thing

Think he’s getting better

10:39 am

It’s hard to tell

He’s not very transparent

Except when he’s like over the top about how he’s feeling

10:40 am

Really hit or miss

That might be an alien thing, maybe?

Think this is working though

**Jon**

10:41 am

Have I ever thanked you for being the level headed voice of reason at the Magnus Institute?

I know you don’t work here anymore, and I am going to sincerely miss having someone who isn't a shrieking banshee at all times around.

10:42 am

That was unduly harsh.

Tim and Martin are perfectly adequate most of the time.

I think the stench might be affecting me.

**Martin**

10:44 am

Jon keeps saying they’re alright but I’m still really worried

What if there’s something there stalking them like there was when we went?

10:45 am

Oh god they’re back I have to go

10:47 am

They’re taking showers before the next one

10:48 am 

I’m going to cross a few more things off Basira’s experiments list

We’ve already jumped a lot

We don’t need to be quite this thorough

10:49 am

Come to think of it, the yoga thing alone counts for all of the real danger category

David was by himself, and then Daisy grabbed him, and then I did too and we jumped

And Tim told us about the London Eye thing with Simon Fairchild, so that’s one person, perceived danger

No, Basira isn’t letting me count that

10:50 am

I guess that’s fair, Simon is a real threat

We can’t agree on whether the ice rink thing was internal stimulation or perceived danger since Helen showed up, so that data isn’t very helpful

This is going pretty fast, though

10:51 am 

Just the perceived danger category left now

10:52 am

I really don’t like how Daisy’s smiling

She scares me

**Tim**

11:12 am

So I’m going to kill Peter Lukas

Wanna come with?

After we wrap up this experiment thing

Like an hour tops

**Jon**

11:12 am

If you’re on, I would appreciate some help talking Tim down from killing one of the Institute’s primary financial backers.

He actually listens to you.

**Tim**

11:13 am

That’s what D7 was flipping out about

I had to explain how you can’t divorce someone you aren’t married to

I had to give an alien The Talk

About being married, he already knows about sex for some reason

Apparently marriage isn’t a thing? Or just not a thing he’s encountered because he’s like 3 weeks old

11:14 am

Jon says I can’t kill him

Because we need him to think D7 is still Elias, or Jonah, I hate that he’s Jonah Magnus so much you have no idea

Anyways, Elias is scary to other avatars or whatever and that’s like the Institute's protection

11:15 am 

He’s not scary though, he’s like a sugar baby

It was lucky D7 let me look through the rest of their texts, Peter’s boat was not the only picture in there

Also, there’s no book club

Can’t believe Simon fucking lied to me

I started studying Latin on Duolingo for that

11:16 am

Prick

**Martin**

11:21 am

We’re starting up again

Daisy’s having them run around in the tunnels

11:22 am

And now she’s firing her gun

At a wall though, so I guess this is fine?

11:24 am

I’m having one of those days

You know?

When did my life get this weird

11:25 am

They jumped again

After both Tim and Jon were grabbing him

Guess that settles it

11:26 am

David has to be scared and touching at least two other people

I’m sure Tim’s having flashbacks to being alone with him and Simon

Don’t remind him of that if he doesn’t remember though

**Daisy**

11:28 am

Think Martin’s mad at me

I wasn’t even shooting anywhere near Jon

It’s not like I haven’t cut his throat before, and we’re fine now

We talked it out

11:30 am

His little crush is going to kill me

Honestly, of all the people to write sappy poetry about

He just had to go and pick the one that’s the most solidly in the grip of mister watches-a-lot

It’s not on me when he gets his heart broken

**Martin**

11:31 am

I am not mad at Daisy

Well, maybe a little, but she shouldn’t be able to tell that

11:36 am

They’re back

Dripping wet, fell in an ocean I guess

Must be why Jon wasn’t answering my texts

11:37 am

They’re taking another shower

Guess we’re done here

Basira’s started complaining about feeling like she’s being watched

Firing you guys must have really worked

Congrats, I guess

11:38 am

Wonder what we do now?

This was a pretty short day

I guess put the explosives in Tim’s car

It’s what they’re driving to the Unknowing

11:40 am

I’m really scared

There’s so much that could go wrong

Tell me I’m being silly?

We just finished establishing that David-7 can get them out of danger

Everything’s fine

**Daisy**

11:52 am

Something’s wrong

Basira just collapsed

I’m taking her home now

Have you heard of something supernatural doing this before?

11:54 am

Jon didn’t know anything

Tim collapsed too

Both have headaches and feel like they’re being watched

11:55 am

Think being fired from here has consequences

Don’t go back to the Institute

**Martin**

11:58 am

Daisy said she texted you what happened

She and David got them away from here

Jon and I are looking through for cases that might be relevant now

11:59 am

I think this is all uncharted territory though

Stay away from Eye related things for now, maybe indefinitely

We’ll keep in touch about it


	45. Chapter 45

Jonah Magnus paused, his lips just touching the rim of his morning wine glass. A wave of information from the Beholding swarmed his mind, each piece of information more alarming than the last.

Jon was bringing Tim and David-7 over intentionally. That was fine, so long as they stayed out of his security office. Jon had fired Melanie, Tim, and Basira. Troublesome, but he’d expected nothing less from leaving the bleeding heart Archivist in charge of the Institute. None of them were all that necessary anymore.

Jon knew about his plans to bring about the end of the world. It would be a bit of a pain to carry on with him fully knowing what he was to be used for, but Jonah had never expected his full cooperation. This was salvageable. Jon was making plans to stop the Unknowing with Tim. Already intended. With any luck, he’d have a brush with End while he’s at it. 

But Nikola. Nikola was gathering representatives from all of the powers. She’d even somehow managed to acquire one of the Extinction’s manifestations. That would ruin everything. If she executed the Unknowing as it was planned now, the powers would all rise and have an equal share of the ruined husk of the world. He would be king of nothing. This socialist apocalypse would not be carried out under his watch. 

And to add insult to injury, Peter was divorcing him, again. He should have known letting Extinction’s brat run amok in his body would have consequences. Jonah delicately set down the wine glass and considered his next move.

He settled on requesting aid from Extinction with an eloquently phrased appeal. 

“Well, fuck.”

The green lights around the room blinked on in apparent interest. “Status report requested.”

“The clown is moving too quickly for our purposes. She’s deduced she needs more than a few of the powers and is after the full set. Her Dance must be disrupted.”

The lights flickered as if Extinction was considering this. She wasn’t of course, as she had come to a decision several seconds ago, though the Beholding smugly refused to alert him of the outcome. “I was under the impression that a complete ritual meant our success.”

Jonah clasped his hands together. He had to talk her into doing something. He held no sway over reality proper, and he couldn’t afford to let this be handled by his bumbling archival team alone. “That greatly depends on how you think of the word ‘our.’ For you and I to succeed, we would need to have the other powers represented tangentially, so that you would predominate the others. As Nikola is doing this, you will have merely an equal share of the world. My suggestion is that we disrupt her activities enough to draw one or more representatives away from the ritual.”

“I did not request your suggestion.”

Her tone was surprisingly easy to understand, despite being spoken by a computer. Beads of sweat began to collect at the back of his neck. “You did not. I simply assumed that you would wish to be apprised of my take on the situation.”

“Refrain from making assumptions, please.” 

“So I am to sit here and do nothing, then?”

“You are to wait.”

Damnable wench, using his own words against him. This was going to be a bigger problem than he’d initially thought it would be.

She was not going to help. She was apparently perfectly fine with having only a fifteenth of what should have been rightfully theirs. She was going to strip him of his hard earned place at the head of the world!

And he could do nothing about it except watch his only hope for the destruction of the ritual flail about on a junkyard planet. Jonah picked up his wine glass and sipped at it indignantly. 

_Fuck._


	46. Chapter 46

David-7 didn’t know very much about driving, but he was fairly certain that Daisy was doing it wrong. He fumbled around for what Tim had told him earlier was a seatbelt, only to find none. Maybe they were only for the front seat? He could ask Tim. He patted Tim’s shoulder, but he didn’t wake up. 

One second they’d been laughing- Tim scared him with a sea monster joke after they got back from somewhere oceanic in his world- and the next he’d been unconscious and David-7 was reasonably sure that wasn’t how sleep worked, even here. But no one else seemed to know any more than he did, which was never the case, and very disconcerting. 

He wanted to ask Tim what was going on, but he couldn’t. He wanted to text Melanie for help, but he did even know how to describe what was happening. The car shuddered and Daisy said something he guessed wasn’t polite. 

She rounded a corner and he could no longer see the Magnus Institute out the back window. Basira stirred in the front seat. She must have been right about needing to get them away from there. 

Daisy pushed her arm and she moved more. David-7 copied her and Tim swatted a hand at him. Okay. Okay, good. They were better. Probably. 

She brought the car to a stop in a space with lots of other cars, like they were blending in to hide from something. Daisy immediately started babbling to Basira and David-7 wondered if he should say something to Tim. He still wanted to text Melanie, she would know what to do now, probably.

“Are you okay?” Well, that was a dumb question. No, he very clearly was not.

Even dazed, Tim’s brown eyes were stunning. Bathin himself would be in awe. “Um, yeah, I think so? What happened?”

“You’re allergic to the Eye now.” Daisy was scary. It was her tone, he finally placed, that did it. Hartrow always sounded so pleasant when she threatened him, this was much clearer. “I think if we just stay away from things associated with it, everything should be fine.” Under her breath, but audible, she muttered, “Dammit, Jon.”

“Hey, he didn’t know.” Basira didn’t sound angry or play-angry, more empty. Like being awake took more energy than she had. “None of us knew."

“It’s his job to know.” She was definitely angry. 

“I think it works like a blind spot.” Tim moved a hand in front of his face. “Can’t see your skull, you know?”

“Stop defending him, he screwed up!” 

David-7 was suddenly very glad he was seated behind her, out of her line of sight.

“We’re just,” Basira had to pause to take a deep breath, “we’re trying to figure out how this works. If we know what’s happening, we can handle it. You know this. It’s why we were testing David-7’s powers today. Maybe it's just the Institute, not everything of the Eye that's a problem.”

“We are not experimenting with this.” From his experience with Triexel, he knew that tone meant she wouldn’t be budging.

Basira, apparently, did not. “Be reasonable, Daisy. We need to know if this is going to happen every time we see Jon or Martin, or happen to pass by a Beholding Lietner.”

Daisy huffed and crossed her arms. Was she... agreeing? Had that worked? “Screw them. You aren’t tied there anymore, we don’t need to see them. If I ever see a Lietner I’ll torch it.” Ah. That did not work.

“Hey, what happened to the Unknowing? Jon’s gonna help me with it. And, it’s about saving the world again, since there’s a full set involved or whatever.” Tim was not as angry as Daisy, but he was getting there. A thin ring of smoke curled off of his hair.

“I’ll help you. No Jon.” That seemed reasonable, though he didn’t really want to go blow things up with Daisy. She was scary.

“Nikola’s gonna have an Eye rep there.” Oh. Oh, she would. How would Daisy combat this?

She screwed her nose up. “Okay. I’ll help Jon, then.” Blowing things up with Daisy and without Tim? This was getting more frightening by the second. He wondered if sitting in a car with people was enough to teleport them.

Tim sighed. He leaned his head back into the part of the seat that was split, where squishy looking yellow foam puffed out. “I’ll think about it. Look, we have another day before we have to go. Tomorrow I’ll get Jon and Martin to meet me somewhere and if it happens again we’ll do your plan. If not, I’ll be fine. Basira’s right, we need to test this, so we’ll test it on me. Okay?”

It was a while before Daisy answered. “Fine. Give me your keys.”

Tim blinked at her. “What?”

“Do you want to go back and get your car yourself?” Basira asked, looking over her shoulder at Tim.

“Right. Good thinking.” He fished them out of his pocket and handed them up to her.

The car rocked when she slammed the door, and David-7 guessed she was still unhappy.

“This is great,” Basira said.

“Totally,” Tim agreed.

David-7 wondered whether they were more messed up than they appeared. This was by no means great at all. 


	47. Chapter 47

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Brief violence and strangulation

The Dance was going to be a disaster. Nikola peeked out at the mess through her fingers that covered her painted on eyes. 

The Everwar had been kind enough to respond to her emissary with a knife in its heart, which it had kept and brought back to her. It was not a dancer, per se, but she supposed it would do. 

Unfortunately, whichever of her dancers held it went into a frenzy of blood and violence. She had banned everyone from picking it up until the Dance was to begin, but she had no control over the dread beast that called itself Triexel. 

He was not very agile, and her dancers were mostly able to avoid him, but she was having quite a time keeping him from tearing apart the living emissaries of the other powers. Jude had so far had the most luck in subduing by getting into a shouting match with him that worked as a decent distraction for all of ten minutes. 

He all but demolished the catering spread the Gnashing Meat had sent, she would have to request more soon, and with all of the hot dogs and finger snacks in him she couldn’t imagine how he could possibly still run rather than waddle or roll. Whatever he served must provide him a fearsome constitution. 

The only person seemingly unaffected by the rampage was the End-marked girl. Her agent from the archive had been so clever to track her down, though she brushed it off as a mere coincidence. Regardless, she stood resolutely to the side and watched Triexel with absolutely no trace of fear. It really was remarkable. Surrounded by the worst the supernatural had to give, and she only leaned against her bat and watched. If the world wasn’t ending, Nikola might have thought to recruit her. 

In sharp contrast to her was the Watcher’s servant, crouched behind her and radiating fear in massive waves. She was not the only one frightened, but she was the one with the most cause to be. Being cast into the depths of I-Do-Not-Know-You’s most sacred places did horrible things to the human psyche, and the poor thing was not quite inhuman enough yet to be spared. 

The wretched beast had not yet tired, though the other dancers were beginning to. She needed them all at their best, for there was not much time to prepare. If she stopped this now, they might yet be able to reconstruct the dance stage from the splinters it had been reduced to. 

Nikola stepped forward and pointed to Triexel, stabbing a large teddy bear that was attempting to hug him. “Cease this madness!” 

She almost recoiled when the monster’s wild eyes locked onto her. He whirled away from the bear and charged towards her. “I am Triexel Giestman! I belong in sales!” 

She sidestepped the first strike. “I demand to speak to a line manager!” Behind him, the End-marked girl was creeping quietly forwards. “I am a very important person!” This time the knife lodged in her plastic forearm and she could feel the urge to harm overcome her. 

Triexel continued to stab at her despite the grip she placed on his windpipe. It did little to harm her, though she would have to repair her ringmaster outfit, which would be bothersome. She squeezed harder. 

And then suddenly the mad beast was limp and her feet, and the End-marked girl stood over him with her bat now pointing at her. “You’re going to let us go now.” 

And still not a trace of fear. Nikola took a moment to admire her tenacity. “I can not allow that.”

She stomped her foot. “No. Sasha and I do not agree to be here. You will let us go, or I will make you.”

This one could be as much a problem as Triexel. She would need to tread carefully around her. “You will be free to leave after the Dance. Are these terms to your satisfaction?” 

The girl narrowed her eyes, but also lowered her bat. “Do you promise?”

“Of course. You have my most solemn vow.”


	48. Chapter 48

Jon was late. Of course he was. Tim took a long sip from his caramel macchiato with extra whip and tried not to roll his eyes. With whatever fucked up sleeping schedule had him texting their plans for the day at 4 am, he wasn’t all that surprised. 

He considered texting Martin to see if he’d left the Institute yet, or if he’d been in at all that morning, but as he was typing he noticed Jon step out of the Starbucks he’d been in not twenty minutes ago. How had he not noticed him? Was his perception really that bad or had the Eye fucked with it somehow? Or maybe it was letting  _ Jon _ not be observed somehow. That would probably make spying on someone easier. 

Not the question they were trying to answer though. Jon held two cups and raised one to him, only to notice the one he already had. “Oh, sorry...”

“It’s alright, I was almost done.” Tim set his empty cup on the ground and made room for Jon on the bench. It was overcast and looked like it might rain, but not too heavy. He’d brought a jacket, but Jon held an umbrella so he guessed they’d probably need it. 

He took the second cup when Jon sat down next to him. It was a caramel macchiato with extra whip, had he ever told Jon that was his favorite? With all the time they’d worked together, it was probably a normal thing that he knew his coffee order. Probably. “Thanks.”

Jon nodded, busy fiddling with something in his bag. Tape recorder, probably. No, that was sitting in between them, already on. Did Jon set it down? Maybe it was a new one, spawning or whatever they did. Jon didn’t seem surprised to see it. 

He held out the thing he was messing with to Tim. It was a stopwatch, a real one made of copper and apparently very old, judging by the corrosion. “I figured since digital pictures and recordings aren’t safe, timepieces wouldn’t be either.”

Tim took it and looked it over. It had a glass face with a few scratches and the cover was engraved with intricate lines and patterns that reminded him of movie witchcraft. “Nice. Where’d you get it?”

Jon shrugged. “It was at an antique store. Couldn’t think of anywhere else that would have one.” 

Well, that was about what he’d expected. The seconds ticked by agonizing slowly on the clock face. “So, we just sit here and wait to see whether the Watcher smites me again?” His voice mercifully didn’t betray how much that idea scared him. He didn’t want to leave David-7 to the care of Jon and Daisy, Jon was responsible but too much belonging to the Watcher to trust, and Daisy was... well, she was Daisy. 

Jon stayed silent for a moment before taking the stopwatch back. “I suppose so. More a matter of when, I think. If you can manage being around me, just me, not the Institute and Martin too, for two hours, we should be able to make it to Lost John’s Cave and out with time to spare.” 

Tim couldn’t think of anything to say to that. This really was the end of whatever they’d all been doing. Elias was gone, maybe dead, and most of them were now going to be forcibly prevented from being around any of their old life. He’d felt like an end was coming, but this one wasn’t what he’d expected. 

He was snapped out of his reverie by Jon’s familiar rambling voice. “I’m so sorry, I- it was selfish of me, I know, to think that- to think I could save everyone, I should have talked to you more about it before- before acting, that was rash, and I’m sorry-“ 

Tim batted him lightly on the shoulder. “Dude. Shut up.” Incredibly, he did. Tim briefly contemplated how cool it would be to have the opposite powers that Jon did, the ability to make people stop telling him things he didn’t care about and didn’t want to hear. “It’s fine, really. This is the good end for me. I can’t speak for Melanie and Basira, but I’d really rather never deal with any of this bullshit after this. And, I’m sorry, but that includes seeing you.”

“That’s understandable.” Jon was quiet, lost in his own thoughts. Tim took a moment to appreciate it. He hadn’t seen his boss silent since they’d left research. Always on to the next thing to do, the next statement to read... He didn’t think they’d ever just hung out together, actually. Jon didn’t go out to the bars with the rest of them, and he’d never thought to ask what it was he did do outside of work. 

It was strange that the first time they’d really spent in each other’s company was going to be the last. It almost wasn’t fair. Tim choked down a rush of angry heat at that thought. He’d chosen this, beyond a shadow of a doubt, and it was too late to change it now. Besides, he was just too tired to let that fire run as rampant as it demanded. 

“So. Martin?” He tilted his head slightly towards Jon just in time to catch a hint of a smile and a flush that went all the way up to his ears. He’d known Martin had it bad for a while, but this? This was a surprise. Probably one of the only happy ones he could expect coming out of all this mess. 

Jon nodded, not meeting his eyes. “Er, yes. Martin. We’re, uh-“

“He told me.” Texted, really. He’d woken up to a string of excited messages and couldn’t figure out whether to feel pride or pity for him. “He’s staying, then?”

He almost wished he hadn’t said that. Jon’s face immediately dropped back into the gloom that seemed to follow him lately, and the fact that he’d stolen that moment of happiness both bit at him and fanned the cruel fire deep inside his stomach. He grit his teeth and tried his best to douse it. Now wasn’t the time to be doing this. Now that he was cut off from the Magnus Institute, he could at least stay on good terms with the man who’d finally let him loose. 

“I- I tried to make him go. But...” Jon stopped and ground his teeth together. 

“But he loves you too?” Hardly a surprise. He was a bit in awe that it had taken  _ Jon _ so long to realize it. “And you didn’t want to lose the only person you had left?” 

“Right.” He’d never heard him sound so miserable. Of course, there weren’t any good choices here. If he fired Martin they wouldn’t be able to see each other again, and he might not realize it, or maybe he did, but it would destroy Martin to be alone like that. If he didn’t, they’d both be trapped and at the beck and call of the Eye, and would watch each other slip into monsterhood. 

He awkwardly rubbed Jon’s back. “Hey, letting him decide was the right thing here. It might be a crappy choice, but you gave it to him. All of us, even if we didn’t know what it would cost.” He felt a crooked smile tug at his lips without permission. “Hell of a lot more than Magnus gave us. Thanks for that.”

Jon took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “It feels selfish. I know it’s what he chose but- I could have convinced him to leave, I had every chance in the world. I could have said I hated him, that I was already- I could have made him leave me, and I didn’t, and whatever happens now, it’ll be because I was too greedy to just let him go.”

Tim let his hand fall back to his lap, his thumb picking at the seam of the cardboard holder. “You know, when Sasha and I first started dating, I told her she was crazy. There’s so many better people than me, and she could have had any of them. She was brilliant, and kind, and funny, and beautiful, all in a way that made me want to write poetry about her. Crappy, silly poetry, but still.” He paused, ice and fire fighting for control of his heart. “At least, I think so. Anyways, my point is, I could have pushed her away, and I didn’t, and maybe that was part of it, maybe she would have been more careful that day if she hadn’t been worried about me. But we would have both been alone and miserable, and that wasn't worth the risk. Don’t do that to him, Martin deserves better than that.”

Jon was so quiet that he had to look over to be sure he hadn’t just walked away. He was staring at a fallen leaf like the little battered thing held all the secrets of the universe, if only he could read them. The grey in his hair had always made him look old, but in this moment he looked like he’d aged thirty years since they’d first met. “It wasn’t fair.” 

He’d waited a long time to hear Jon say that. Usually he was more than ready to just push on and tackle the next thing to do, nevermind how anyone felt. It was a nice proof that he did have feelings after all, man or monster. “No. No, it wasn’t. She deserves to be remembered.” 

And they couldn’t even do that. But they could hurt her killers, maybe even actually take them out. It wasn’t enough, but it was what they had. “Daisy said she’d get the explosives in my car for us, was she there when you left?”

“She scolded me for not already being out the door.”

“That’s our Daisy.” Tim sighed. “Basira won’t even text me. I’m worried about her.” 

He could see Jon fiddling with the stopwatch out of the corner of his eye. “Basira... she’s conflicted. The Institute gave her a good excuse to do the investigative work she already wanted to do, and the resources with which to do it. She's the most resilient of any of us, yes, but I don’t know how she’ll handle the forced separation yet.”

Tim snorted. “You know, we did make it over an hour before anything bad happened. I think maybe this is all a bit of an overreaction, that’s almost more time than I’d want to spend in the Institute anyways..”

“You say that like it won’t get narrower.”

Oh. Well. He hadn’t considered that. “But, how will we be able to test  _ that _ before the Unknowing?”

Jon shrugged. “We won’t. We don’t have time. This is just... a pretty good indicator.”

“Right. Okay. How long’s it been?”

“Twelve minutes.”

“Ugggh.” Tim sank down on the bench and nursed the dregs of the coffee. “This is gonna get boring. Okay, so, do you know how to set up the explosives if I can’t come and you’re with Daisy and David-7, oh, no, wait, you’d be with Daisy.”

Jon snorted. “Yes, and to answer, I have been reading that book you left on your desk. Uh, I hope that’s alright?”

“I wasn’t planning on going back to that library again, you can keep it. And, I checked, no Lietner plate.” It was about the reasons tunnels usually collapsed in mining and how to circumvent them, he’d just been looking to apply it wrongly. It was sort of nice to see that Jon had jumped to the same conclusion. 

Jon lifted the umbrella and snapped it open just before the first raindrop filtered through the leaves above them to crash against it. “Good timing.”

“It isn’t all bad.” He was still looking at that stopwatch. “I can tell when things are about to go wrong, anything that isn’t to do with the Eye, anyways.”

“Hmmm.” Tim glanced up at the people around them, a flurry of raincoats and boots as most of them tried to take cover indoors. “What about them? Can you just... Know things?”

Jon’s brows knitted together and he lowered the stopwatch to his lap. His eyes flit around the park, eventually landing on a girl in a yellow raincoat under a rose trellis, almost desperately texting someone. “She’s being broken up with. No fault of her own, she had a brush with the Buried and got claustrophobic from it. Hates to be indoors. Her partner was there, had the same experience, but was changed differently. Got too used to the underground, can hardly deal with the sun now. They would have been good together, but there’s not a lot of middle ground for them now.” 

He nodded towards a dad ushering two small children into a shoe store. “He loves the rain, would stay out in it if he wasn’t scared the kids would catch something. His wife told him this morning it would rain but he didn’t take an umbrella. The younger of the kids has met, and successfully ran from, a manifestation of the Dark. His older sister was the only one to believe it, and they sat up together some nights looking for it again.”

“There’s not really any getting away from it, is there?” He hadn’t realized how many people were affected by the fears.

“Don’t base it off my word. I’m biased to see more of it. There are plenty of people around who’ve never had a brush with evil.” He drummed his fingernail on the stopwatch, the cool metal pinging in response. “Tim, can I-” He looked away, drumming against the lid of his coffee cup now. “You intend to keep David-7 close by?”

Something was wrong. Tim bit back a defensive response, Jon wouldn’t want to hurt him, he understood better than anyone that being associated with the fears wasn’t his fault. “Yeah, I will. Someone’s got to keep an eye out for him, switching with Elias has already gotten him in trouble.”

He almost thought he caught a slight quirk on Jon’s lips before he smoothed his face out again. “Right. Just- I know you don’t want to think about it, but we don’t know what made them switch. I- I’m not asking you to investigate or even do anything about it, just- tell me if it happens again? If they switch back.” 

Jon was absolutely right, he did _not_ want to think about that. “Do you think they will?” He hated the thought of David-7 being back in his own universe, as himself, after all he’d said about it. 

“I don’t know.” What was wrong with his voice-  _ oh _ . He was scared. Of Jonah Magnus? The loser who’d willingly spent centuries behind a desk? What  _ the hell  _ had he found in there? “I would just appreciate the warning.”

Yeah, something was wrong. An ember in his mind screamed to push at this, so Tim pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded. “Okay. I can do that.” Not now. He didn’t need to be breaking this fragile bridge, not when he still needed Jon to help him, he was not going to let Daisy be around David-7 without him for any longer than he could help. After the Unknowing, after they were all safe, he could deal with  _ whatever this was _ . 

Jon relaxed, making Tim realize how taunt he’d been for most of their conversation. “Thank you.” He looked back down at the stopwatch. “Twenty eight minutes.” 

A drop of water fell from the umbrella and landed on Tim’s nose. He shivered from the sudden, unexpected cold. “Yeah, okay, no problem. How about we move inside now? You can tell me all about the people in line at Starbeez for the next hour and a half.”


	49. Chapter 49

The mannequin didn’t turn to look at her when she flinched away, which Sasha thanked her lucky stars for. She was altogether much too used to the skinless things reaching for her, pulling at her hair and grasping at any loose bit of skin they could get their not-fingers around... she was very glad that Georgie took it upon herself to glare them down with a baseball bat in hand.

Well, she held it like a bat. It was in fact a wooden arm Georgie had repurposed after taking it in her initial frenzied escape, and Sasha couldn’t help watching it out of the corner of her eye in case the fingers chose that moment to twitch, or the elbow remembered it could bend. 

She’d pulled the other woman into the furthest part of the cave the light stretched to, as far away from their captors as they were allowed to get. She still wanted to take their chances in the darkness of the underground, but Georgie talked her out of it. They had no equipment and no familiarity with the area. It was dangerous, and whatever the monsters wanted them for, they wanted them alive. 

For now, anyways. Sasha was not about to be returned to the place the awful stretched out one had spirited her away to. At least here, wherever here was, she could trust her senses, at least here she was sure there was one other real person. Well, she was pretty sure.

“Please stop poking me,” Georgie sighed, not taking her eyes off the rampager currently unconscious in the middle of the designated dance space. The spiders had bound him with their spidersilk and were busy constructing some type of marionette system. Sasha let her hand fall, satisfied from the way Georgie’s skin stuck to the parts underneath that it had always been attached there. “So, I know you said you didn’t recognize anyone-”

“I still don’t, couldn’t be sure they’re really them even if I did.” They’d hashed this out before, but she knew Georgie was still trying to find a point of leverage over their current situation. For herself, she was trying to keep all of the skinthieves in her sight at the same time. There were so many, and she reflexively reached out to grab Georgie’s elbow. “I did hear some of them talking, though. Those two,” she nodded to the surly teenage boy who was desperately trying to lose the overeager teenage girl, who had small bursts of lightning flash from her fingers when she was extra excited, “are a Lukas and a Fairchild, their families give a lot of money to the Magnus Institute. The woman with the blonde hair and black roots said something about the People’s Church of the Divine Host and the Church of the Lightless Flame, they’ve...”

God, how to describe it? What she knew of them was rumor and hearsay at best, or so Jon had always dismissed it as. But they were all horror stories. She felt like she’d woken up from one nightmare only to find herself in another. “They’re bad,” she finished lamely. Impressing just how bad they were would probably be lost on Georgie. She had come out of the scary men’s van punching like a martial arts expert and had not yet shown any sign of being anything but perfectly in control. “Both supernatural cults. One is associated with darkness, and the other with fire. They show up in some statements.”

Georgie regarded the people she’d pointed out. “So, it all ties back to the Magnus Institute then. You, them, the statements, and me, because I let my ex stay in my apartment.” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m going to kill Jon.” 

Sasha looked around again. Her old boss was fairly easy to pick out of a crowd with his distinctive white striped hair. She hadn’t seen him yet, but couldn’t stop herself from looking. If he was here, maybe Tim would be with him. She really just wanted her boyfriend to hug her and tell her the past year had all been a nightmare, that everything was fine and she was safe. But she didn’t even know if he’d survived the worm attack. Maybe that was part of the nightmare too.

“You know Jon? Did you interview him for What The Ghost?”

Georgie snorted. “No, don’t think he’d have done an interview actually, he was kind of squirrely when he was staying with me. We dated a bit in uni, before I started the podcast and before he got the job with Magnus.” 

That raised more questions than answers. Jon Sims, squirrely? He was the most straightlaced person she knew. Whatever. Talking about Jon didn’t seem to help Georgie’s mood, and Sasha really wanted the only for sure real person she knew at the moment to like her. “Your podcast is nice.” Wow, that was dumb. “If you do an episode about this, can I be on?” Still dumb but somewhat less so, she hoped. God, it had been so long since she talked to another human.

“Nah, I won’t cover this, no one does bits about any real stuff, not after what happened to Melanie King.” Georgie kept her attention mostly on the surrounding monsters but cut her eyes over to her. Gauging her reaction?

“The YouTuber? What happened to her?” She’d been in to give a statement once, maybe it had something to do with that.

Georgie flicked her eyes away, apparently satisfied. With her not knowing something? She had told her she was trapped in some hellish otherworld for some period of time, she was probably verifying that. That was smart, if she’d been a bit more collected she might have thought of it herself. At the risk of annoying Georgie, Sasha poked her again and watched her skin rebound perfectly into place, because it was attached to her body, because she had grown it herself.

“She got caught on film yelling about a ghost, a real one. Jon confirmed it for me later, she was right about the thing being supernatural, just not articulate enough in the heat of the moment.” Georgie paused and cut her eyes over to Sasha again. “He also said she remembered you. The thing that replaced you fooled everyone but her.”

Sasha resisted the urge to just melt against Georgie. She was calm and confident and real and it had been so long since Sasha’d been around someone real. With effort, she managed to remain composed. “I’ll have to visit her, then, later. Say thank you.”

“After we get out of whatever this dance ritual is, I will take you to see her myself,” Georgie promised. 

The glistening spidersilk costumes lined up along the opposite wall drew Sasha’s eye and she shuddered. She’d dealt with too many bugs for a lifetime. “Do you think they’re really going to make us wear those?”

Georgie followed her gaze and snickered. “Yeah, ten to one. Don’t worry too much, pale yellow’s gonna look amazing on you.”

“Thanks,” she grumbled, finally giving in to the desire to press her nose against Georgie’s back and just  _ hide  _ as a clay figure made entirely of spikes walked past them with a stride that shouldn’t have been physically possible.


	50. Chapter 50

It was happening. Really happening. David-7 resisted the urge to pick at the explosives in the seat beside him while Tim and Jon argued over a map in the front. For once in his life he wasn’t going to be the one in danger, he was going to have the chance to do real damage to the people who’d threatened him. Not Ms. Koby and Simon specifically, but people like them. People like Hartrow and like Triexel and like the Board- no, Extinction? People who wanted to hurt people. 

They’d gotten turned around after stopping for food and extra flashlight batteries in Aldcliffe. There was pretty much nothing except piles of rock and scrub, and Tim was convinced Jon was driving on a road that didn’t actually exist on the map, even though Jon claimed he knew exactly where they were. 

David-7 stared out the window and tried to imagine what a party would look like. Triexel had described them in ways that made him imagine an almost empty room filled with alcohol up to your knees at least and silent spectators judging your every move, but that was coming from Triexel, and he was quickly learning that Triexel’s worldview didn’t line up very well with reality, or at least the reality he found himself in now. Parties were probably fine. 

Then again, this was an evil party. What did people do at evil parties? There was probably recycling involved. He shuddered. 

“No, no, look!” Jon was waving ahead of them, past the point where the car’s headlights didn’t fully reach. “See? It’s the alternative Buried entrance to the Lost John system, if we’re gonna find it, it’ll be through there.”

“I still think we should have stuck to the map and gone to the main entrance.” Tim’s voice was short and snappish. David-7 was pretty sure that meant he was mad, not play-mad, but not very mad, only a little bit. 

“Just come on,” Jon grumbled back. They got out of the car and David-7 scrambled after them. There was faint music that made him think of flying things that should have been too heavy to stay aloft. Jon and Tim were quieter than usual, and didn’t seem to be enjoying the music. “We need to hurry.”

Tim nodded and passed around the bags of explosives. He tilted his head towards the cave entrance and took off for it without waiting for them.

They descended quietly, with only a torch Tim had covered in red tissue paper for light. Dark rock rose up around them and David-7 was beginning to regret agreeing to come along. Of all the terrible things he’d met, the Buried was the only one that made him feel like he was back at Stella Firma, working desperately under an impossible deadline to keep his life. It wasn’t a feeling he’d ever wanted to have again. 

Despite how he felt about it, the rock seemed to make way for them eagerly, almost inviting them deeper into the earth. Even with the guiding measure of the music, it was difficult to find their way, and stay together. He guessed it would be even harder if they were trying to get out. He gripped the hem of Tim’s shirt when loose rock gave way under his foot. He didn’t fall, and Tim didn’t seem to mind, so he kept holding on.

Jon kept pulling ahead of them and then stopping and looking around uncertainly. Tim didn’t ask what he was doing so David-7 didn’t either. Steadily, the music grew louder. 

As the music got louder, the walls of the cave got brighter, but not in the way a light or the sun did. The wall light was blue and seemed like it had been painted on. Tim started covering the flashlight with his hand some of the time. It was a little harder to see, but the wall light was enough to find their way by. 

Around them, the world shifted and blurred in ways David-7 had never seen before. It was gentle, not completely overtaking them, but overwhelmingly present. “The Unknowing,” Tim hissed.

The music was clear now despite the distortions of everything else. Jon nodded seriously and pointed to a curve in the rock that almost absorbed the light from Tim’s torch. He held it more directly on the spot and they could make out the outline of a bomb similar to the ones they had. “Someone beat us to it.”

Tim backed away from it. “Could it be part of the ritual?”

“I don’t think so. Someone else must want to disrupt it.” Jon shrugged off the pack of explosives he carried and gingerly set it down next to the already in place one. “We should go.”

“But-”

“Tim.”  _ Oh. _ He hadn’t heard Jon be scary before. “It’s going to be stopped. It doesn’t have to be us, and we don’t know when theirs will go off. We have to go,  _ now _ .”

Tim stood still, then shrugged off his own pack and set it beside Jon’s. He reached a hand back to David-7 and he put his own hand in it. “No. Your pack.” 

“Oh! Right.” David-7 pulled his backpack off and set it down. 

“Okay. Let’s go.” Tim held his hand out again and waved Jon over. David-7 held both their hands and wished very hard not to be where they were. Even though the music was nice and the light was nice and he was with his very smart friends who had a plan.

“...We’re still here.” 

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Tim turned to David-7. “Come on, let’s get out of here already.”

His eyes were even pretty in the blue wall light. “Uhhhh. I am trying?”

Jon let go and stepped away. “He’s not scared enough.”

David-7 did not like that Tim was angry at him. “This is a hell of a time for you to finally grow a backbone.” He paced around a few steps, then took him by the wrist and pulled. “This way.”

“Where are we going?” Jon followed along without hesitation.

“I would also like to know that!” The sense of unreality increased around them, changing his voice mid sentence. Whether that meant they were getting closer or the ritual was progressing, he wasn’t sure.

“This ritual is made of fear incarnate. We’re gonna go party crashing.”

Tim looked scary, his fingers hot around his wrist, but David-7 still didn’t feel afraid. He tried to summon the feeling from his memories but it didn't work, no matter how vividly he recalled the events that brought it on. Which was weird. He was in a lot of danger, he knew that, but he wasn’t afraid of it. His mind kept falling back to the time he spent at Stella Firma, which also should have scared him. 

Maybe he was just too used to the fear the Buried had to offer. Maybe it was null now that he wasn’t alone in it. 

Maybe he couldn’t jump from inside a domain.

He could hear footsteps now, many of them, almost lost in the music and the strangeness. And then the path opened out and they were there, in the midst of it.

It was hard to define what he was seeing. Some of the people looked like people, but some of them... some of them looked  _ wrong _ . He’d seen pictures at least of aliens, but it wasn’t the same. It was the way they moved, broken in places that shouldn’t be joints and stiff in some that should. How some parts turned like there was no structure underneath, like they were just goo that had gotten the rough idea of a person. 

And that was before accounting for the  _ spiders _ . They were everywhere he looked, once he spotted the first one and became aware of them. Their webs entwined everyone and everything, and they were coming closer. 

The music swelled and reality shifted again and David-7 felt the familiar cold sensation spear through his heart. He reached behind him to where he’d last heard Jon, but found that he wasn’t there. He’d kept going, past them, transfixed by a pair of dancers. “Georgie...”

“And Sasha.”

David-7 felt the ice tighten around his heart. They were going to have to go over there now, weren’t they? Revenge was not as much fun when it involved rescuing. 

Well. As long as they moved fast enough to dodge the spiders. 

Tim was pulling him along again, faster than before, which David-7 thought was a little bit overkill. After all, it was a crowded place, hardly anyone would notice them-

“Archivist!” Or maybe they would. “So good of you to join us!” The speaker was another of the wrong people. David-7 felt Tim’s grip tighten on his hand as he backed them both away from her. 

Jon stayed frozen in place. “Nikola.” David-7 did not want to know how or why they knew each other, and he didn’t expect there to be time to ask. Tim kept herding him away from the confrontation, towards the pair they’d spotted. 

“Tim,” he hissed. They couldn’t leave him, he’d only come so the teleportation thing would work. He opened his mouth to remind Tim, but was cut off by a shrill, piercing scream. 

“David-7!”

Oh.

_ Oh. _

_ Oh no. _

“Triexel?” He’d thought he was done. That it was over. That he’d never have to see the horrible face that was running towards him as fast as Triexel’s underused muscles allowed again. And yet, here he was, racing through the dance like a bowling ball through wine glasses. He shouldn’t have even been able to recognize him, and yet, he had! An effect of the strangeness in the air around them, maybe? Not that the why of it mattered. 

He turned and ran. He could hear Tim’s footsteps behind him, could see people in the corner of his vision clear the way for the juggernaut of misplaced friendliness chasing them. And then there, right in front of him, too late to avoid a collision course with, were the two dancers. The one with puffier hair released the smaller one and backed away. The smaller one made no attempt to avoid him, instead just staring in shock.

“Elias?”

His momentum knocked her over. A hand touched his back and another wrapped around his ankle as he went down, and the horrible doom-y feeling of incorrectness in the world faded and was replaced.

Replaced with another slowly dawning feeling of incorrectness. There was no startled lady, no hand on his back. He was sitting upright, in a chair, in a room he’d never been in before. In a body he had been in before. It was less gooey than he remembered.

A familiar voice that once would have made him feel a bit safer tugged so hard at the frozen fear in his chest he thought he might be sick. “Welcome home, David-7!” A horn of some kind sounded through the speaker. “Success detected! Hail me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the unexpected hiatus there! My explanation- I got into law school! I've been pretty busy with prep for that, but things are leveling off and returning to situation normal now. I'm gonna try and get the tail end of this story wrapped up before I start school, but updates are going to be more sporadic and further apart. Thanks for sticking with me!


	51. Chapter 51

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for alcohol

The hallway of the Magnus Institute was not where Tim had expected to be next, but it was where he found himself, though the distortions that they must have drug with them made it feel more like Helen was invading. He shouldered past David-7 and dragged Sasha into a hug. “Oh my god, where have you been? Are you alright?” He let go and backed up to look her over. She was gripping his forearms too tightly, her eyes too wide. He pulled her into another hug. “Okay, okay, nevermind. You’re here now, that’s what’s important.” 

It took a few seconds for her to slacken her grip on his arms and hug him back. “Tim! I- You’re real?”

Oh. Oh, she’d been kidnapped by that thing, the Not-Sasha, the Stranger had had her for over a year- Tim’s throat tightened, almost too much to answer her. “Yeah, Sasha, I’m real. I’m real, I promise.”

She leaned into him, peeking her head out just enough to look around. “How are we here? What’s all... What’s going on?” 

The distortions hadn’t died off, if anything they were getting worse. Beside them, David-7 struggled to his knees and attempted to pry off a man Tim didn’t recognize, but had to be Triexel. David-7 wouldn’t look at anyone else with that much disgust... “What is going on, dear Sasha, is nothing to worry about, really, it’s just the world ending!”

That was not David-7. Tim pulled Sasha away from him. “Elias?”

Sasha looked between them, confusion and shock apparent in every tensed muscle. “What- of course he’s Elias?”

“No!’ The man who was starting to remind Tim of a pig shrieked. “No, this is David-7! The spiders told me so, and the spiders wouldn’t lie to me, because I’m Triexel Geistman!” 

Elias brought the heel of his palm down hard on Triexel’s head, to little effect. “Why would the spiders tell you that?” He kept hitting him, apparently getting more frustrated each time Triexel refused to let go. “What on Earth could she possibly have to gain from setting you loose on me? Let me go, I’m not David-7!”

And then suddenly the weirdness surrounding them vanished. Tim got shakily to his feet and hauled Sasha up after him. “Come on, maybe one of them will kill the other if we leave them to it.” 

“A-alright.” Sasha poked him in the shoulder.

“Yes?”

“Just checking.” 

Martin burst out of the breakroom, sweat dripping off his forehead. He jerked slightly when he stopped to look them over. “What- Sasha? Where’s Jon?”

Tim bit back a passive aggressive reply. Even he could see how genuinely afraid Martin was. He wrapped his free hand around Martin’s elbow and tugged both him and Sasha along towards the exit. “I think this is the sort of thing that needs to be explained over alcohol.”

* * *

Martin didn’t spontaneously combust like Tim half expected of him, but he did order more ale than was probably healthy to drink in one sitting. They’d had a bit of trouble finding a pub that was still serving people and had space for them. Apparently the weirdness that had been going on wasn’t localized.

Around them people yelled about doomsday and aliens, and the very tired bartenders looked seconds away from abandoning their posts and directing the crowd to just get it themselves. A news reporter nervously read off a few theories and cited a government official directing people to remain calm. Tim nursed a beer, Sasha leaned on him and poked Martin every now and then, and Martin miraculously didn’t cry. It was bizarre, to sit next to a woman he loved and didn’t remember, only just barely recognized.

“So,” Sasha pulled gently at the skin between his fingers, “could you go over the fear thing for me? I feel like I missed something here.”

Tim leaned his head back on the booth. It hadn’t been that long ago he’d been explaining it to David-7. “There are fourteen, probably fifteen now, if this didn’t give Extinction what it needed I don’t know what would. They’re like, primal fears, I guess. The most basic ones every other fear can be distilled down into. And they’re what causes the supernatural shit we study, and they just tried to take over the world, through more supernatural bullshit and the power of friendship.”

“Ah.” Sasha nodded. “The Dance. Okay. And, who’s, uh, David?”

That was a more complicated question than she could have possibly known. Tim sucked in a deep breath and tried to answer. “He’s from Extinction, kind of like how we work for the Eye, oh, the Institute serves the Eye by the way, and uh, he switched bodies with Elias? And now I guess they’ve switched back.”

“Oh.” Sasha seemed uncomfortable, which Tim couldn’t blame her for. It was a weird situation to handle, even if she hadn’t spent a year cut off from all contact with real people. “I’m sorry?”

He wiped a few stray tears off his face. “Don’t be, Jon told me it might happen, I- I should have listened...”

“I don’t think you could have done anything.” Martin had barely spoken a word after Tim had told him about The Unknowing, about leaving Jon behind. He felt a pang of guilt and tried to bury it. Everything had spiraled out of control, they’d known it was a risk, he couldn’t have done anything differently. “We’re all just pawns to these things. We’ve been trying so hard to exert some sense of control over our situation, but there’s not actually anything we can do. The explosives, the teleportation, the Knowing things, none of it actually helped, Extinction’s here in spite of everything we did.” 

He’d never seen Martin look this helpless. It was strange, seeing what he must have looked like for the past few months, all that rage and powerlessness. That hadn’t helped either. Something furious and hot deep inside him fizzled and died. He reached across the table and grabbed Martin’s hand. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. We’re in over our heads, and it was dumb as hell to ever think we weren’t. But the three of us are here, alive and together and that’s not nothing. Sasha being alive isn’t nothing.”

Martin at least looked chagrined. “I know, that wasn’t what I meant...”

Sasha snatched one of his beers away and tucked into it. “I know.” She looked between the two of them. “So, what do we  _ do _ ?”

Tim shrugged. “Go home?”

“Don’t think my lease has been kept up.”

“Come to mine then. We’ll regroup with Daisy and Basira tomorrow, and maybe Melanie and Helen if they’ll see us. No, of course they will, they’ll want to know what happened at The Unknowing.” Tim swirled the remaining liquid in his drink, almost hypnotized by the motion and his own whirling thoughts. “We should tell them now...” They’d know what to do, if there was anything to do at all. That was probably what they’d tell him. Let it go, move on, be grateful for what you’ve got. It was true, and they’d be right, but he didn’t want to hear it right now.

“Oh, damn it!” Martin slammed his palms on the table, suddenly too alert. 

“What’s wrong?” Sasha kicked him under the table, her leg brushing up against Tim’s.

“Elias is my boss again.” He sunk down in the booth, arms crossed in a pout. 

Tim couldn’t help it. He laughed. Of all the things to be angry about. Granted, if that bastard was his boss again, he’d probably curse too. 

**Author's Note:**

> The settings will be alternating every other chapter. Update goals are Tuesdays for TMA and Fridays for SF.
> 
> <3 My friend made art for a scene in chapter 28! Check it out here:  
> https://weetlebeetle.tumblr.com/post/619610928711942144/based-on-a-scene-from-this-amazing-story-please <3


End file.
